“The more social media we have, the more we think we're connecting, yet we are really disconnecting from each other.”
--JOHN ARTHUR
By Alex P. Vidal
NEW YORK CITY -- Social media like Facebook appears to be the most favorite platform of many candidates gunning for major seats in the Philippine elections on May 2019.
Just like in the 2016 elections, many candidates relied heavily on the social media to propagate their programs and further tell their “friends” who they are and what are they capable of doing more once they are elected or reelected.
Some of those with edge in name recall didn’t find it hard to win with or without campaigning in the social media.
Some relatively unknown bets or newcomers, even if they spent a bulk of their free time advertising themselves as worthy candidates in the social media, ended by the wayside.
We also know of several prominent reelectionists who didn’t make it in the 2016 elections after giving their full time, trust and reliance on the social media
Reason?
They thought the social media is the end-all and be-all of the winning formula in the elections.
Wrong.
Not all of our (limited to only 5,000) “friends” in the social media can vote; not all are registered voters; not all of them will vote for us even if they belong in our provinces, districts, cities, or municipalities.
Not all of them are our "fans" with fanaticism or blind loyalty to us.
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Moral of the story: go out, move your butts, shake the hands of the people and visit places with rich voting population like public markets, churches, villages, terminal stations.
Participate in debates and media fora and actively speak in communities with large gatherings.
Go to the people directly, make eye-to-eye contact with them, and touch their hearts.
Social media can’t help elect any candidate.
We can’t convince the voters that we are genuine public servants, that we are good leaders and sincere aspirants for a public office by merely posting “selfie” photos, pictures of the food we eat in a popular restaurant and exotic vacation spots and countries we recently visited.
Social media is only good for pa-cute and pa-porma effect and doesn’t have the hard-wired power and influence to amaze or tantalize a true-blue and dyed-in-the-wool voter who genuinely cares for this province, district, city, and country as a whole.
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Like many fellow journalists in the Philippines and in other countries, we are closely monitoring the developments in the no-holds barred investigations being undertaken in the mysterious disappearance of our colleague, the brave Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was believed to be murdered and chopped to pieces when he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey on October 2, 2018.
Here’s what we have gathered as of this writing (noontime, October 17, 2019 US Eastern time):
-There appeared to be a possible tie to the crown prince: Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a Saudi diplomat and intelligence officer, is among the men under investigation by the Turkish authorities as part of the probe of the disappearance and suspected death of Khashoggi. Mutreb is closely connected to Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, a Saudi source told CNN.
-US-Turkey meetings: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and, separately, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, in Ankara. Each meeting lasted about 40 minutes. Pompeo did not make remarks after the meetings and has now left Turkey for Brussels.
-The Turkish investigation: Turkish investigators collected a large number of DNA samples from the Saudi consulate in Istanbul when they searched it Monday, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency reported Wednesday, without saying where the information came from.
-What hasn't been searched: Turkish officials have not yet searched the Saudi consul’s residence in Istanbul and it is not clear when they will. Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said Wednesday the search would happen “once a joint consensus is reached.”
We monitor this shocking news regularly and are very much interested on what will happen to the probe because like Khashoggi, we also write critical stories in a hope to help our government and not to topple it.
We maintain that journalists are partners of our government officials in public service, not enemies.