Family dynasty makes politics/elections expensive

After an expensive mid-term election season of at least P150 billion, with unsatisfactory political and economic results, we have to redo our “cost-benefit” analysis of this necessary democratic process.

- Ruben Almendras

While politics is always part of human activities among groups of people, real/legitimate elections happen only in democratic societies. Autocratic governments even cite elections as a waste of time and money, so they don’t call for elections. If they do, they rig it and dictate the winners at minimal expenses.

The challenge for democratic societies is to have credible elections at a reasonable cost relative to the size of the country’s economy (GDP), and get the desired outcomes politically and economically. The more advanced northern and western European countries have elections that are 1/10th of 1% of GDP as compared to the Philippines 1% of GDP. Australia and New Zealand also at the same percentage, but not the US, which is behaving like a developing country in their election and politics, especially in the Trump presidencies. I am not sure if it has something to do with being a parliamentary or presidential form of government, as there are also very expensive elections in parliamentary governments. I suspect it has more to do with the level of income distribution and functional literacy of the voting population.