Social Media and People Power
by: Leia Castro-Margate
The investigation of the flood control projects in the country has become the most subscribed telenovela for the nation at present. Filipinos watch with bated breath as revelation after revelation during the committee hearings exposed a grotesque spectacle one would think only happened in fiction.
Politician-owned condo units and DPWH offices filled with billions in tax payers’ money ready for distribution tax-free; Contractors with firms ironically named after saints raking in money from ghost projects; Movie stars thrown in with traditional politicos known for using scapegoats like Janet Lim Napoles to avoid jail time and liability; People drowning in floods that infrastructure projects should have prevented; Street flooding in seconds after just a few minutes of rain; and the ordinary Juan and Juana counting coins and budgeting their hard earned money after taxes just to get by, living paycheck to paycheck. If these situations do not make you angry, either you are apathetic or you might be a contractor or official benefitting from similar schemes. There’s no middle ground.
I am angry, beyond angry in fact. Then I see more revelations from people in the know, those who have seen the scenes behind what has been revealed to the public so far. Analysis and interpretation to help the ordinary person visualize the greed, nay, avarice happening at our expense. And the helplessness and hopelessness looming in the horizon, knowing that similar cases in the past have not brought the nation a fulfilling sense of justice. I am angry, and I turn to social media to make sense of what’s happening, to identify the real enemies, so I can direct and focus my anger on them/it. I am not alone.
Social media has allowed us to do what radio, hushed messages, secret gatherings, and recorded cassette tapes have done for the Filipino people in 1986. Social media, Facebook and Twitter in particular, are now paving the way for faster mobilization of people, dissemination of information, and unifying like-minded individuals who relate to similar experiences shared by content creators.
Apart from an organizing, mobilizing, and unifying tool, Social Media may even spur a novel kind of People Power Revolution. Cancel culture and call-out culture are newer terms, which stem from the use of social media, and are similar to the concepts of public shaming, ostracism, and boycotting. There is a bitter sense of fulfillment in seeing these thieves get mocked and ostracized online perhaps because at the back of our minds this is the only form of “justice” we might ever come close to having.
However, many feel that making noise on social media is not enough. Mass mobilization in the streets is still a powerful tool towards making our voices heard and pushing the government to do better in cleaning up its ranks and rooting out graft and corruption. It unifies not just socmed users but offline people who are equally infuriated.
Last September 7, an anti-corruption rally was held in Baguio and even attended by mayor Benjie Magalong who has long been outspoken about cases of greed and corruption. There are now more calls on Facebook for a September 21 rally in various areas all over the country and rightly so. Apart from the flood control projects, road projects, drainage, streetlights, landslide and erosion control projects and other similar government infrastructure should likewise be investigated. The flood control investigation should likewise open the flood gates to investigating all other projects and setting in place a better system for accountability, transparency, and good governance.
