EDITORIAL – Political fatigue

Have the people grown tired of political promises?
THE two most recent campaign sorties of the administration Team PNoy Senatorial team and the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) here noticeably attracted small crowds,  so unlike the big rallies that marked past political seasons.
The decline in crowd attendance at this year’s political rallies could be due to a number of factors, from lack of interest to an overload of inane, lackluster election propaganda.  Add to that the fact that this is only a mid-term election not a presidential one.   
The advent of new forms of campaigning, like the social media and the expanded advertising and publicity exposure has caused a saturation of different political messages. In a way, the barrage of messages at this early stage of the campaign has caused a so-called message fatigue among the electorate.
It’s so different now, really. You open the internet and you will find loads of pages containing election propaganda. You switch on your the television set and you are assailed by a deluge of political ads competing with commercial come-ons for your attention. And yes, brace yourselves because even opening a personal email and mobile message inbox could be highly politicized, too.
So, what’s surprising about sparse crowds–many among them just plain curious folks—attending political rallies to listen to the old refrain of recycled promises? It’s obvious that people have heard enough. It’s not these campaign sorties that will count in the end.
It’s not only the messages emanating from the election campaign that have evolved in this digital age.
The electorate has also become ’digital.’ The digits–the more, the better–could still turn out to be the swing factor.
Lest we forget, this is politics–Philippine style.