'Isang tulog na lang' (One last night of sleep)

Election Day, May 12 is tomorrow — our midterm elections 2025. And I for one, will be happy when it's all over, and we can go back to everyday life.

- PHILIP CU UNJIENG

Let's be honest, more often than not, we don't even get excited over midterm elections. For the jaded observers, they're just a changing of the guard, or a ceremonial passing of the torch; an insider party among political cohorts and confederates. For the super-jaded and cynical, they're just the periodic non-Presidential opportunity to revitalize the local economy, via cash liquidity.

But this 2025 is different. Since last year, we could see the writing on the wall, the battle lines being drawn - Pro Marcos or Pro-Duterte, and the steady proliferation of fake news and mud-slinging. The digital age, and the popularity of social media, has resulted in a democratization of getting the news out there, but that has its up side, and sad to say, down side as well and the prevailing million-dollar question is "What qualifies as 'news' today?" If something patently false is said with conviction enough times, does it qualify to become the "truth" of today? Or a perception of it, that so many subscribe to out of ignorance, whether willful or not?