Fun elections in the Philippines — where have they all gone?

Pandemic polls: Supporters of Rodrigo Duterte take selfies at an election campaign rally ahead of the Philippine presidential elections in 2016. Will this election be as tension-free? — AFP

IT’S election time again in the Philippines. I earnestly hope, as perhaps many others do, that this pandemic edition of our electoral process would be tension-free unlike its immediate past model. I mean, we should be done with the hateful heaping of vulgar words, curses, references to intimate body parts, and such other crudities that were on offer during the last elections.

It would be nice if we could go back to the ways of gentlemen politicians of the past. They wrangled, and how, but they duelled with logic and wit, and not trading barbs about each other’s mother’s real calling or alleged profession.