A country of lemmings

The latest Digital News Report of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism reports that 51% of Filipinos actively avoid the news. This alarming development is more than a media consumption problem. It raises a troubling question about the capacity of citizens to participate meaningfully in a democracy when a significant portion deliberately disengages from information about public policies and the exercise of political power.

The words of the television sage, Ka Ernie Baron, comes to mind: ‘Kapag walang knowledge, walang power.’ When citizens withdraw from political information, they become less equipped to scrutinize public officials and evaluate competing claims. The resulting vacuum is then filled by brain-dead personalities, partisan narratives, and social media content designed to provoke emotion rather than encourage understanding.

Groupthink sustains dynastic dominance because political loyalty becomes more important than independent judgment. People follow the opinions of their social groups, communities or political leaders rather than critically examining the evidence. Family names become substitutes for political platforms, celebrity becomes a proxy for competence, and electoral popularity is mistaken for governing ability.

The celebrification of politics is both the result and amplifier of this dire social problem. Politicians are marketed as entertainers, celebrities and familiar personalities. Their private lives, dramatic confrontations and carefully cultivated public images become more important than their legislative records or policy proposals. Political competition becomes a contest of personalities rather than ideas.

The public is then invited to follow the Pied Piper, often without asking where the procession is heading. The consequences are not merely disappointing election results. They can be years of poor governance, wasted public resources, weak institutions and persistent social problems. When loyalty to a personality overrides scrutiny of performance, voters may repeatedly reward the very political arrangements responsible for their difficulties.

The deeper problem is an education crisis that extends beyond access to schooling. Comprehension matters. Citizens must be able to understand public policies, evaluate evidence, recognize misleading arguments and distinguish political performance from actual competence. When comprehension is weak, political discourse deteriorates into slogans, personality contests and simplistic explanations for complex problems.

This is not an argument for blaming ordinary Filipinos for the country’s political failures. Educational disadvantages, economic insecurity and unequal access to reliable information constrain people’s choices. But it is an argument for taking civic education and critical thinking seriously. A democracy cannot function well when citizens are denied the tools to scrutinize those who govern them.

Meanwhile, government continues to confront complex problems through whack-a-mole policymaking: suppress one symptom, respond to another crisis, announce another initiative, and move on before addressing the underlying causes. The same governance failures resurface because interventions are reactive, fragmented and rarely supported by sustained institutional reform. Bad outcomes appear endless because the system keeps treating symptoms instead of fixing structures.

The way forward is grassroots political organization. Voters and taxpayers must organize between elections, not merely mobilize when political personalities call upon them. Communities need durable organizations that educate citizens, scrutinize budgets, monitor public services, demand transparency and develop policy alternatives. This is how voters become more than spectators and taxpayers become more than passive funders of government.

Political dynasties thrive when citizens remain fragmented, disengaged and dependent on political personalities. Democracy becomes stronger when citizens organize around shared interests, demand evidence and insist on accountability. Collective organization then gives citizens the capacity to challenge entrenched political interests and sustain pressure for reform beyond a single election cycle.

Therefore, the path to political empowerment does not begin with finding a Pied Piper with a social conscience. It begins when citizens stop simply following like fans and start organizing like true stakeholders. And being consistently interested in political news is an integral component of this mindset.