There is a special kind of anti-intellectualism in Philippine politics that masquerades as authenticity. It is the celebration of incompetence as though ignorance were a virtue.

We just heard one from Vice President Sara Duterte: “I don’t know how to use a computer” – or a laptop. She delivered it with the peculiar smugness politicians adopt when they mistake incompetence for authenticity.

She was responding to a question about the latest bit of political folklore – let me be clear, I see it as a political campfire talk because it sounds to me like a wild or exaggerated tale passed around a drinking table at 2 am – that she supposedly hurled a laptop at one of her lawyers after revelations that at least P6.7 billion had moved in and out of bank accounts tied to her and her husband through the years, over the course of her political ascent.

And what do we get in reply? Not an explanation. Not a denial with detail. Not even the basic courtesy of clarity.

Instead, the conversation collapsed into her almost comic declaration of technological illiteracy.

And somewhere in all of this, we’re supposed to feel reassured.

One scarcely knows what is more alarming: the allegation itself, or that she is of the belief that confessing ignorance of basic technology would do her well. The Vice President of a country of more than 100 million people, governing in an age of digital banking, cybercrime, artificial intelligence, and electronic governance, appears to think that not knowing how to use a laptop is a charming personality trait rather than a disqualification.

Or was that a lie? We are left with two possibilities, neither one is exactly comforting.

Either she really can’t use a computer, which raises obvious questions about how someone like that imagines running anything in this country, or she can use one and just said she can’t, which is a whole different hobby: lying with a straight face and calling it personality.

Her built-in audience, of course, laughs approvingly, as though technological illiteracy were proof of humility rather than evidence of dangerous unpreparedness.

Consider the absurdity. She wants to oversee a sprawling bureaucratic machine involving cybersecurity, digital finance, online education, disaster response systems, data governance, and electronic procurement, and yet, by her own admission, she cannot operate one of the most basic instruments of modern governance.

This is a politician who has long been salivating over the presidency telling the public she does not know how to use a laptop. And she wants to lead this country? Did she even realize how dumb that sounds?

Imagine an airline pilot telling his passengers, before the plane even moves, that he does not know how the instruments in the flight deck work, and expecting applause for his honesty. The passengers would demand to disembark immediately. Yet in present-day Philippine politics, ignorance is often rewarded not with concern, but admiration. The less qualified the candidate appears, the more “relatable” he becomes.

This disease infects governance itself. We see it in the Senate, once a melting pot of brilliant ideas from the cream of Philippine statesmen. Over time, it has regressed as our society cultivated a species of politician who cannot tell stubbornness from principle, or obstruction from intelligence.

‘Senator Oppose’

Take Robinhood Padilla, an ex-convict who reinvented himself from the “Bad Boy of Philippine Movies” into a senator with the most votes in the 2022 elections, aided by political connections that secured him a presidential pardon. One might call him “Senator Oppose,” that permanently aggrieved figure who believes the sacred duty of the Senate minority is simply to oppose, oppose, and oppose without the inconvenience of critical thought.

Such politicians confuse noise with scrutiny and imagine democracy as a perpetual tantrum rather than a process of discernment. If the administration proposes infrastructure, they oppose it. If it proposes subsidies, they oppose them. If it proposes reforms they once supported, they oppose those too, because political toxicity and appearing outraged are more important to them.

Didn’t Padilla once declare, with disarming candor, that he would follow whatever the Duterte patriarch – the man who wiped away his sins and restored his right to vote and stand for office – says?

There’s an old barbershop talk about General Fabian Ver being told by the dictator, Ferdinand E. Marcos, to jump. Instead of asking why, the general supposedly asked, “What floor, sir?” That’s exactly what Padilla’s misplaced loyalty looks like.

This is not dissent. It is intellectual laziness dressed as conviction.

Real opposition requires intellectual labor. It requires studying legislation, understanding economics, weighing consequences, and occasionally admitting when the other side has a workable idea. The mature critic does not ask how to destroy a proposal, but whether it serves the public and if not, how it might be improved. That is the difference between statesmanship and man-child politics.

The tragedy is that many voters reward this poverty of intellect and the politician who proudly advertises ignorance is praised for being “simple.” Meanwhile, competence is treated with suspicion, as though expertise itself were elitist. 

Branding

The consequences are not funny. Governance becomes less about solving problems and more about maintaining political branding.

And branding, in the Philippines today, is often enough.

If we are to move forward, this country cannot afford to continue romanticizing toxicity, stupidity, and dullness. It must demand intelligence as well as honesty from even the most well-intentioned politicians instead of punishing it.

Charisma is not a substitute for competence because the world does not lower the difficulty setting because politicians choose ignorance as identity. You cannot run a country on vibes, movie lines, and handshakes. Eventually, someone must read the documents, understand the technology, and know what is actually going on.

A politician who cannot operate the tools of modern governance is not “masa.” That politician is unprepared.

And the politician who thinks opposition means nothing more than a habit of negation and reflexive “no” turns both democracy and governance into a hollow ritual with no real thinking behind it. Pastilan. – Rappler.com