Text messages become potent black prop tool

15 May 2007

LEGAZPI CITY—POLITICAL RIvals have found a fast, easy and discreet way to pelt black propaganda at each other up to the last stretch of the campaign period—through text messaging.

Citizens have been receiving text messages, which earlier started as jokes or satires hitting some candidates.

But the closer it got to election day, the more serious these messages have become and some have turned into serious allegations.

Here are some of the contents of text messages that have sparked conversations among voters for the past three weeks—that two candidates are lesbian and gay and that a candidate gave P40 million to the communist New People’s Army in exchange for harassing his rival.

Other text messages alleged that a candidate gave away motorcycles to village chiefs and money in his sorties and that another hoarded rice for typhoon victims so he could instead give them away during the campaign period.

Another message was that an aging candidate was seriously ill and was airlifted secretly to a hospital in Manila.

Former presidential chief of staff, Joey Salceda, who is running for Albay governor, has been alluded to in some of the text messages, but he shrugged them off.

He said the spread of black propaganda or mudslinging was usually practiced during elections and something not to be surprised about.

He said he did not take these things seriously. “Where is their proof? (Their allegations) are certainly not true. You have seen my campaign, it has been very clean.”

The most recent black propaganda was that incumbent Gov. Fernando Gonzales, whose wife is running for mayor of Ligao City, had made an arrangement with Salceda for him not to contest the mayoral candidacy of the governor’s wife in exchange for the withdrawal of the governor in the gubernatorial race in favor of Salceda.

“That’s a big lie, a libelous allegation! I have never talked—and will never talk—to Salceda about such arrangement,” an angry Gonzales said.

Imelda Cabañes, a voter and government employee, said she was one of those who received this kind of text message but it did not influence her choices. Ephraim Aguilar, Inquirer Southern Luzon