Not sitting out

It is officially election season as the official campaign period leading to the May 12, 2025 local elections kicked off last Friday. Prior to becoming a lawyer, my participation in electoral exercises had been limited to simply exercising my right to vote.

- Ally. Ian Vincent Manticajon [e-mail]

Since becoming a lawyer, I've been invited a few times to run for elective office in my hometown. But on every such occasion, I have a standard reply to decline: politics is not for me. I'm a timid or shy person --laidback, or at best, more reflective than assertive.

But I do love political strategizing, and I'm a firm believer in data-driven political campaigns. Thus, in a couple of elections since 2010, after I became a lawyer, I was involved in helping political campaigns, mostly as an election lawyer for our law firm. I actually relished the experience because it gave me a deeper and more nuanced perspective of how politics, at least at the local level, works in our country.

It made me realize that I'm not really cut out for politics myself, though I respect those who are engaged in it. I have seen how hard they work, how skillfully they manage people, and how they harness talent and intellect to push their programs forward.