Better be cynical? I hope not.

In my thoughtful moments over the past week (when I was considering what I would be blogging about), I had thought of pursuing an optimistic tone and celebrating how ICT, by facilitating the free-flow and availability of information, facilitates the work of lobbyists as well as legislators and policy-makers in ensuring that timely and responsive measures are enacted.

Writing this blog however, I find myself pursuing a skeptical, if not cynical tone.

Just the other day, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported how the President’s website still featured now Congresswoman Gloria Arroyo. So much for up-to-date government IT facilities. To think that, in this case, we’re dealing with a simple website. Wait till we start scrutinizing the more sensitive and crucial IT facilities that are meant to facilitate the performance of the government’s functions.

And it’s not just the purely technical aspects of IT efficiency that we have to grapple with. For after all, even if de facto lobby groups (in the form of fanpages) appear all over facebook and gather thousands upon thosuands of fans, that begs the question of what assurance is there that the powers-that-be will actually listen? Or take the case of blogging, while a few make names for themselves in blogging, certainly there a good number of other individuals who, astute and relevant as their opinions may be, do not have the ears of those who call the shots. I’m sure that for every Manolo Quezon or Ricky Carandang, there are dozens of other bloggers who are simply not as prestigious. Simply stated, it's one thing to be able to say what one wishes to say, it's another to get those who should be listening to actually listen.

The bigger problem is thus a matter of political culture. For even if a case urgently needing action is superbly captured in an amateur clip forwarded to GMA-7’s YouScoop or aired via ABS-CBN’s BMPM, it remains entirely up to the powers-that-be to, at the end of the day, heed a matter that desperately calls for their attention.

In fact, recent legislative debacles are an all too clear manifestation of how even the most passionate lobbying (backed by the best technical capacities) is no assurance that legislators will listen. Take the RH Bill, it gathered a great deal of support from online channels, even as it was opposed by traditional (or, as critics would prefer, ‘medieval’) institutions, and yet, it was those institutions which prevailed. Take the Freedom of Information Bill, certainly there can be no greater example of proposed legislation that is resting on and driven by the information phenomenon; and yet it was dumped on the petty excuse of a non-quorum. Or take, the overwhelming distaste for Gloria Arroyo, if legislators (even slightly) heeded the widespread clamor for her ouster – a clamor which was manifest in the internet as much as, if not more than, in the streets and other traditional avenues – it is not a longshot to say that we would not have needed a Noynoy Aquino to change the political landscape, more so such change would have occurred much sooner than on June 30, 2010. As it turned out however, the appeal of pork barrel was too irresistible.

I go back thus to the choice between optimism and skepticism. We can arm ourselves with the most superb of (technological) mechanisms, but at the end of the day, it is in this milieu of a much-distressing political culture in which the tasks of lobbying and pursuing reforms are going to play out. Sadly, technology’s promise is empty, if it cannot be wielded properly.

- LUIS JOSE F. GERONIMO
Entry #4