Philippine elections have never been totally clean. Killings, intimidation, corruption and all sorts of election law violations have always accompanied every poll exercise. It is debatable whether or not things have become better or worse, but one thing is clear: we never seem to be able to rid ourselves of such aberrations.

To be sure, such incidents are not unique to our country, but we have imbued these anomalies with such an endemically Filipino garishness in the same manner that we have turned the Willy’s Jeep into our very own jeepney.

The almost instantaneous access to information brought by the digital age has also brought all these nefarious efforts at winning votes into far and wide currency to an unprecedented extent. Thus, while we have had dancing politicians even before martial law, we now have the ability to witness, on every mobile phone, the ludicrous spectacle of a Jinky Luistro dancing with all the grace of a frog being chased by its natural predator.

And speaking of which, Senator Bong Revilla has “elevated” dancing to new heights of political gimmickry. His latest campaign ads have not bothered to lay down even the most banal of political platforms. All they have are catchy music and a subtext saying, “Vote for me, I am great at dancing the budots.” I am sure that won another term for him.

While in the past decade electoral hopefuls had sought to exploit social media as a more modern and cheaper alternative to radio and television advertising, during the present campaign period candid videos of candidates distributing money to the electorate heavily competed with campaign ads and luscious ladies on every social media platform. What was once done clandestinely was now being openly touted.

It would be bad enough if private money was being used to woo voters, but what is worse is that taxpayer funds — in the form of AKAP, AICS or whatever — was being utilized. But worst of all was that the recipients of these dole-outs showed no compunction in flaunting their booty on their social media accounts, holding up thousand-peso bills like trophies, and thanking their political patrons for the largesse. These conveyed the message that now not only is it normal for politicians to buy votes, but voters may proudly declare that they sold their suffrage.

Ah, politics, what sins are committed in thy name? Not only do candidates dance (harmless enough) and purchase political favors (not so harmless), but they kill as well (very harmful). It is a discredit to our national culture that political assassinations have become a given, and nary a collective eye is batted when one reads of such things.

And while buying votes and establishing dynasties have been with us since the Malolos Republic, 2025 may go down as the election year when transactional campaigning and dynasty-building attained new heights.

This is the year that trading money for votes was institutionalized with the aforementioned AKAP and AICS. This year also marked the rise of the most number of families treating politics as family corporations, never mind that the Fundamental Law has declared it an abomination.

Also notable was the abuse of the partylist system, whereby many politicians and political parties used partylist organizations as extensions of themselves or their parties, notwithstanding that this was farthest from the intention of the framers of our Constitution. And, lastly, this may be the year when the ban on giant billboards, usually observed in the past by even the most self-serving of politicians, was blatantly violated by so many.

My father — who was also a politician — used to tell me that “all is fair in love and war, and politics is war.” But even war has the Geneva Convention, and the things that some of our politicians do to vie for votes defies every civilized convention of decency known to man.