IF THE trapo were a character in a teleserye, he would be the kind who smiles with pressed palms in public, but snatches the last piece of lechon backstage. The kind who cries on cue, kisses babies for likes, and says “public service” like a punchline.
Yet, the real punch is this: he wins. Again and again. Despite exposés, plunder cases, half-hearted apologies, and grandstanding hearings, he survives. And thrives.
The word trapo originally means rag — old, used, and disposable. In Pinoy politics, however, it has come to mean the opposite: stubbornly reusable.
Traditional politicians are not just part of the system; they are the system. They have mastered the Pinoy rhythm of utang na loob, pakikisama, and palakasan, playing political chess on a board laid out by centuries of patronage. As anthropologist Fenella Cannell described in Power and Intimacy in the Philippine Households, Pinoy politics is often deeply entangled with kinship, favors, and fealty — the trapo simply thrives in it.
To dismiss every trapo as an empty-skulled clown would be inaccurate. These politicians are cunning tacticians. They attend funerals of people they barely knew. They fund basketball leagues and beauty pageants. They pose in relief operations they barely organized.
They dance the budots like it is national policy, hand out jackets like legislation, and flash smiles so wide they hope you forget they have no platform at all. They kiss hands and higher-ups with the same intensity — anything for airtime or a committee seat.
They confuse legislation with live-streaming and think public service means public stunts and viral punchlines. They treat Congress as a family reunion, passing seats down like heirlooms. And when they run for office, it is not to serve, but to swerve — from subpoenas, court hearings, or a pending graft case with their name all over it.
And it works. In communities where government is a distant concept and poverty is painfully personal, a rice sack delivered a week before elections feels more real than a six-point platform. As the Social Weather Stations 2023 survey shows, 41% of voters still equate “good governance” with “being helpful to the poor,” often measured not by policy but by pasalubong or ayuda.
And yet, some trapos do not even bother hiding anymore. Many have seamlessly taken over the party-list system, once intended to give marginalized voices a seat at the table. They put forward proxy nominees, only to replace them with political heirs once accredited.
The cleverness of trapos should never be underestimated. In a political system with weak accountability, they are like viruses finding new ways to infect an already fragile democracy.
But the more frustrating question is not why trapos exist, but why we keep voting for them.
The easy answer is poverty, but the real one is more complicated. When public institutions fail, people turn to personalities. When bureaucracy is cold, the barangay captain who pays for a coffin becomes a savior. (To be continued)/PN
