Why politicians lie?

It’s political season once again, and soon, the political carnival mood would surge to its highest
level before the year ends. The whole country would then be decorated with colorful tarpaulins
bearing the faces and slogans of the candidates. Communities will be flooded with leaflets and
from time to time the speeches of the politicians reverberate through high heavens of their
promises and intentions.

People seem to enjoy listening to these speeches, even though they know pretty well that they are
listening to lies! I am not saying that all politicians are pathological liars, but I believe that lying
during elections in this country has developed into an effective technique applied by politicians
to gain advantage over their opponents.

But why should they lie instead of telling the truth?

The reasons politicians lie is because the public doesn’t want to hear the truth. People want to
hear what they want to hear. When two candidates are running and one of them tells the truth and
the other says what the public wants to hear, the one who says what the public wants to hear are
surely elected. Thus, and there are exceptions to this, if you want to win an election, you better
start lying, because the guy who’s telling you the truth doesn’t have a chance. Do you agree?

Well, let me bring you a few years back in time to give you a good example. Few months before
the 2004 elections, GMA in her speeches promised to pursue genuine agrarian reform, and even
promised to the people of Mindanao that if elected, the call for federalism will be prioritized.
Congressman and now Speaker of the House who was the majority floor leader during that time,
promised the militant organizations that their call for a 125 pesos daily wage increase will be a
priority agenda for the next Congress, on condition, that they will not campaign against GMA.

But they have to tell that lie, because if they tell the truth – that they are against Federalism, they
cannot implement genuine agrarian reform, and they do not have the political will to grant P125
daily wage increase, organizations particularly the sectoral groups directly affected by these
issues, with great certainty, would actively campaign against GMA! The “hello Garci” would
not have been an issue because other areas could easily equalize the one million margin that they
harvested in Central Mindanao. The lies worked!

You cannot also blame the politicians for lying about themselves, as what I have said, the public
doesn’t want to hear the whole truth. It would be a political suicide for any politician to admit
that they smoked marijuana or sniffed shabu even once in their life. And even if the public knew
that they were not hooked into it, and that they were sorry for it, they are trapped to the fact that
they have broken that law. And do we want to elect a person who knowingly and deliberately
take the law into their own hands and breaks it? What kind of example does that set?

Another touchy subject for the politicians is about sex. Every living creature down to plant life
wants to get laid. We are a product of that process. Particularly among male candidates, males
who have the drive, strength leadership, and confidence to rise above others are usually very
sexually active men. Women, just like men (according to Greg Deligero) are biologically
“attracted to power and authority.” And men of power and authority have a hard time resisting
the temptations of large numbers of beautiful women. So the candidate is faced with having to
lie about sex to get elected – though there are exceptions to this, such as Mayor Duterte who tells
the truth about his active sex life.

Worst, politicians who were clearly convicted of crimes, and who are running for elected
positions would continue to lie by claiming that they were just victims of injustice or simply
“napolitika lang!”

Personally, I am comfortable with people who admit that they have made mistakes or even broke
the law. People who swear that they have not broken the law scare me. But how can the voter
justify voting for an admitted law-breaker?

What should we expect from our politicians? Should we expect moral perfection? Or should we
expect them to do the job they were hired to do? We elect people to do a job, paid for it and that
job is to spend taxpayer’s money and to pass laws to keep the good order of society.

I think that we need to judge a politician on the basis of how good of a job he does doing what
we hired him to do.

I an ideal world, politicians wouldn’t lie. But, when voters elect politicians who lie over those
who tell the truth, than the voters shouldn’t be surprised when they get caught being less that
truthful. But in order for politicians to tell the truth, the voters are going to have to stop
punishing honesty.

For comments, e-mail to: roldanalx@yahoo.com