Vox Populi, Vox Dei? A Reality Check on Democracy in the Philippines

There’s a warmth to black coffee in the morning that’s both comforting and sobering. No sugar, no cream—just bitter truth in a mug.

As I sat with mine today, someone on TV said it again.

“Vox Populi, Vox Dei.”

The voice of the people is the voice of God.

They said it with pride, as if it were a badge of honor. As if every decision made by the majority is automatically righteous—untouchable, unquestionable.

But I’ve lived long enough to know that the voice of the people is not always wise.

Not when that voice is manipulated.

Not when it's bought, silenced, or wrapped in fear.

And certainly not when it echoes from the mouths of trolls, or bounces off the algorithmic walls of Facebook and TikTok.

I respect democracy. I believe in listening. But lately, I’ve been asking: What if what we’re hearing isn’t God’s voice at all?

What if it’s just noise?

Or worse—what if it’s the sound of a nation slowly forgetting how to think freely?

This morning, as the aroma of kapeng barako lingered in the air, I started thinking more deeply about this phrase. Where it came from. What it meant. And whether we’ve turned it into something it was never meant to be.

Let’s talk about that.

Brewed Reflections: The Origins of a Dangerous Phrase

We like to quote it as if it were scripture.

Vox Populi, Vox Dei.
The voice of the people is the voice of God.

I’ve heard it in political debates, in Sunday homilies, in comment sections, and sometimes even in street corner conversations when the topic turns to elections. It rolls off the tongue with certainty—as if to disagree would be to go against heaven itself.

But the first time those words were written, they weren’t praise. They were a warning.

Alcuin of York, a scholar and advisor to Emperor Charlemagne, wrote these words sometime around 798 A.D.—not to celebrate the people’s voice, but to caution against it.

“And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always close to insanity.”
(HistoryNet)

He wasn’t being poetic. He was being honest.

Crowds can be loud, emotional, and dangerously wrong.

But somewhere along the way, the phrase was repurposed. In 1327, it was used in a sermon to support the removal of King Edward II. Centuries later, in 1709, it became the title of a political tract in England that championed the rights of the people to choose their government.

Even then, it wasn’t claiming the people’s voice was divine—it was saying no king had a God-given right to rule over others. That in the absence of divine command, people should be free to decide.

“There being no natural or divine Law for any Form of Government... Mankind is at Liberty to choose what Form of Government they like best.”
(Wikipedia)

There’s a big difference between choosing freely—and assuming every choice we make is blessed.

Here in the Philippines, we’ve turned Vox Populi, Vox Dei into something sacred. We wear it like armor when election results are questioned. We use it to silence anyone who dares to say: Wait, is this really what the people wanted—or just what they were made to believe they wanted?

And maybe that’s the problem.

We’ve placed a halo over the phrase without ever looking at where it came from.

It didn’t come from God.
It came from men.
From empire. From politics. From centuries-old struggles for power.

And yet we repeat it, year after year, as if it absolves us of the need to think.

If we’ve misunderstood the phrase all along… what else have we built on that misunderstanding?

When Fame Wins Over Competence

If we’ve misunderstood the phrase, maybe we’ve misunderstood the weight of our choices, too.

Maybe that’s why we’ve learned to equate visibility with value.
Familiarity with fitness.
Fame with leadership.

We’ve always had entertainers in government. That’s nothing new.

But what we’re seeing now is something different.

According to the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, at least 11 news personalities, actors, and media influencers are poised to fill seats in the Senate this 2025. If these projections hold, nearly half of our 24-member legislative chamber could be composed of people better known for punchlines, catchphrases, and fan clubs than for policies or platforms.

Some of them are already there—Robin Padilla, Jinggoy Estrada, Loren Legarda, and Raffy Tulfo.
Others are waiting in the wings: Erwin Tulfo, Ben Tulfo, Willie Revillame, Manny Pacquiao, Bong Revilla Jr., Lito Lapid, and Tito Sotto.

This isn’t just a coincidence. It’s a pattern.

There was a time when having a media personality or an entertainer in the Senate felt like a welcome disruption. A breath of fresh air. Someone outside the usual circles.

But now the chamber is starting to feel too clown-heavy. And while it may sound harsh, maybe it’s time we say it plainly—what we need are statesmen and stateswomen.

Unless, of course, we’ve decided that the laws of the land are best entrusted to jokers.

And if we’re honest, it’s not really their fault. We’re the ones putting them in office.

It’s easy to vote for the face we see every night on TV. Easy to admire someone we feel we already know. But knowing someone’s voice from a noontime show is not the same as knowing their stance on legislation that could shape our future.

What troubles me is not just the fame. It’s what we’ve forgotten to look for.

Competence used to matter. Or maybe we just thought it did.

Insightspedia’s Rolland Ramirez explained it well in an interview with BusinessWorld:

“Filipinos don't really associate education with competence... Competence for Filipinos is someone who rose from the ranks.”

There’s beauty in that, I admit. We value hard work. We admire those who “made it.”

But that admiration becomes dangerous when we stop asking what they’re actually capable of—when the ability to deliver a punchline replaces the ability to write a policy.

When the same people we cheered for in action movies now write laws about national defense.
When noontime show hosts take seats in budget hearings.

It makes me wonder if we’re confusing comfort with leadership.

Or maybe we just want to be entertained—even when it’s our future on the line.

And if this is what we now call leadership, what does that say about our standards?

When Votes Are Bought and Sold

We talk about elections as if they’re sacred.

We talk about them as if they’re a ceremony—where each person, guided by conscience, steps into a polling station and casts a vote that echoes their hopes for the future.

But here, that’s not always the case.

Sometimes a vote is not a voice.
It’s a transaction.

Ask anyone in the provinces. Even in the cities. There are places where a candidate’s platform doesn’t matter nearly as much as the color of the envelope they’re handing out—or the brand of noodles tied to the plastic bag.

Comelec Chair George Garcia said it bluntly during a public briefing:

“Do not accept the money and don't vote for those candidates... It takes two to tango.”
(Philippine News Agency)

He’s right.

It’s not just the vote buyer. It’s also the one who accepts. And while I understand hunger—I’ve seen what it does—I also know this: selling your vote doesn’t end hunger. It just resets it, six years at a time.

To make things worse, the system isn’t even subtle.

In Nueva Ecija, one candidate was heard proudly declaring:

“I don't have a lot of tarpaulins. What I have a lot of are envelopes with money… because that's how the game is played here.”

That wasn’t a slip of the tongue. That was a strategy.

Comelec has begun working with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas to flag massive cash withdrawals before elections—because, apparently, someone withdrawing ₱10 million and converting it into ₱100 bills is now standard operating procedure in campaigns.

“Why would you exchange ₱10 million or ₱20 million into ₱100 or ₱200 bills?”
Garcia asked.
“Massive exchanges of money could be used for vote-buying, and that should not be allowed.”
(BusinessWorld)

This isn’t some isolated mistake in a remote barangay. It’s premeditated. Structured. Funded. Traced to the very people who will later preach integrity once they’re in office.

And what does that say about us?

If our vote can be bought, was it ever really ours?

Comelec’s chairman went further. He pleaded:

“Don’t allow anybody to take advantage of our poverty. It is a disgrace that there are people taking advantage of our hunger and poverty.”
(Philippine News Agency)

Disgrace.
That word stayed with me.

Because that’s exactly what it is—an insult, dressed up as help. A bribe, pretending to be aid. And yet so many of us accept it not because we want to, but because life has taught us that this is what survival looks like during election season.

But survival is not empowerment.

And democracy doesn’t live where choices are made out of desperation.

So every time someone says, “Vox Populi, Vox Dei” in defense of election results, I want to ask—

Which part exactly was divine?

The ₱500 in the brown envelope?
The sardines handed out ten nights before election day?
The tricycle driver forced to vote “as instructed,” or risk losing his route?

We’ve built a culture where votes are sold and bought like market goods.

And then we pretend that what rises out of that exchange is the voice of God.

When Loyalty Comes from Fear, Not Faith

Some call it loyalty.

But loyalty, at its core, is a choice.
And what we saw in recent years didn’t always feel like a choice.

During the Duterte administration, support wasn’t just about belief—it was about survival. You were either with him or against him. And if you were against him, you had to be careful what you said, where you said it, and who was listening.

It wasn’t politics.
It was a warning.

The drug war created a climate where fear wasn’t just a byproduct—it was the point. Even those who had doubts kept quiet, afraid of being labeled “protectors of addicts” or “enemies of peace.”

“From satanic panic to Duterte worship,” wrote Gideon Lasco in Inquirer Opinion,
“fear has always shaped the way people think and act collectively.”

That fear didn’t disappear after the press briefings. It lingered in tricycle terminals, in sari-sari stores, in family dinners where politics became a taboo topic—because saying the wrong thing might cost someone more than a conversation.

And then came the red-tagging.

Suddenly, activists, students, labor leaders, even teachers and artists were being called communists—not based on any evidence, but based on dissent.

“Philippine authorities are using red-tagging and other forms of threats and violence to intimidate Indigenous leaders and activists…”
— Human Rights Watch

One of them, Beverly Longid of Katribu, shared how state-linked accounts circulated doctored photos of her online—stripped of dignity, edited to humiliate, dehumanize, and silence. That’s not just harassment. That’s psychological warfare.

And it works.

Because when you see others dragged through the mud, accused of crimes they didn’t commit, threatened in broad daylight—you start editing your own thoughts.
You soften your opinions.
You stop posting.
You stop asking questions.

Even when your silence hurts more than your fear.

Back then, during Martial Law, when you spoke out, you disappeared.
Or you died.

Today, the tactic has changed. The threat is still there—but it wears a suit now.
It speaks in legalese.

There are still killings, yes. Journalists, activists, environmental defenders—they still die for saying too much.

But the system has evolved. Those in power have learned to use the law—not to protect the people, but to punish examples.

Look at what happened to Leila de Lima.

A sitting senator. A former Justice Secretary. A woman who dared question Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs. For that, she was imprisoned for nearly seven years—detained over cases built on the testimonies of convicts, many of whom would later retract.

She wasn’t silenced quietly.
She was silenced publicly.

So everyone else could watch.
So everyone else would think twice.

It doesn’t stop at online shaming. Journalists, Indigenous leaders, and even student organizers have faced criminal charges, surveillance, and baseless accusations. Libel, cyber libel, terrorism tags—these aren't just legal terms anymore. They’re tools of intimidation.

The message is clear: speak, and you suffer.

So people stop speaking.

The result is a silence that looks like peace from the outside—but inside, it’s just fear with the volume turned down.

So when people say, “The people support this leader”, I wonder.

Is that support real?
Or is it self-preservation dressed up as patriotism?

Because when loyalty is given under pressure, it’s not loyalty at all.
It’s fear with a mask on.

And if fear is the driving force behind public support, can we still call it democracy?
Can we still call it the voice of God?

And maybe the harder question is this:
What kind of voice survives in a country where dissent is punished, and silence is rewarded?

When Bloc Voting Overrides Conscience

We like to think of our vote as sacred. A reflection of our own discernment. Our way of speaking truth in a noisy world.

But what happens when that voice isn’t yours anymore?

In the Philippines, some churches don’t just encourage their members to vote—they tell them exactly who to vote for. And in some cases, not following that instruction isn’t just frowned upon—it’s seen as defiance.

I’m talking about bloc voting.

And no group represents this more visibly than the Iglesia ni Cristo.

“People cannot but notice the unity of the Church of Christ. This fact is most visible during election times…”
— UPD Journals

To be fair, unity can be powerful. The idea that a community stands together during elections—on the surface—sounds admirable. But when unity is enforced at the expense of personal conscience, it stops being unity.
It becomes control.

In 2013, 10 out of 12 senatorial candidates endorsed by INC won.
(SAGE Journals)

That kind of influence doesn’t go unnoticed by politicians.

Which is why election season often includes visits to INC headquarters—not for worship, but for negotiations. Because when you can deliver hundreds of thousands of votes in a single endorsement, you don’t just hold sway. You hold power.

And that’s what makes it so hard to swallow.

Because when candidates seek the support of religious institutions not for shared values but for vote blocks, we’re no longer talking about moral discernment.
We’re talking about transactions.

It’s not the will of God. It’s the math of politics.

And it leaves me wondering—what happens to personal accountability in all this? To prayerful reflection? To discernment?

How many believers sit quietly in the pew, already knowing that their vote has been pre-decided?

And if a vote is dictated by doctrine or hierarchy, can we still call it free?

Because if you didn’t choose it…
If it wasn’t yours to begin with…
Was it ever truly a voice?

And if that voice is what we count on election day, can we still call it the voice of God?

When Algorithms Decide Who You Like

We used to believe we were free to choose.

Now I’m not so sure.

In the Philippines, we spend more time on social media than almost anyone else in the world.
According to the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, Filipinos spend an average of four hours and fifteen minutes a day scrolling, watching, liking, reacting. That’s twice the global average.

And it’s not just for fun anymore.
That’s where we get our news.
That’s where we form our opinions.
That’s where we decide who we like—and who we don’t.

But the thing is, we don’t actually decide.

The algorithm does.

Platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook don’t show you content based on truth. They show you what will keep you watching. What will stir emotion. What will provoke a reaction.

In that world, a meme moves faster than a fact.
And politicians know it.

Vice President Sara Duterte, for example, doesn’t just use TikTok for fun. She uses it to shape a public image—strong yet relatable, decisive but still lighthearted. Her videos are carefully curated, edited for charm and presence.

As noted in Philippine E-Journals, her use of “politainment” helps maintain clout long after campaign season ends.

And she’s not alone.

We are now voting for people not based on platforms, but on personality. Not on what they’ve written into law, but on what they posted last night.

It’s easy to forget that these platforms aren’t neutral. They’re engines. And they’re optimized for engagement, not enlightenment.

The more you like a certain view, the more of it you see.
The more you disagree with something, the more likely it disappears from your feed entirely.

According to the University of the Philippines Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs, disinformation narratives flooded Filipino feeds during the 2022 national election—often amplified by coordinated posts, strategic hashtags, and emotion-driven storytelling.

The algorithm doesn’t just reflect what we want. It shapes it.

So I have to ask—how much of what we believe is truly our own?

And while we’re asking that, maybe we should ask this too:
What is constant exposure to these platforms doing to our ability to think?

We scroll endlessly—through opinions, headlines, hot takes—and we call it being informed.
But study after study suggests otherwise.

A 2023 paper in BMC Psychiatry found that excessive social media use is linked to everyday cognitive failures—forgetfulness, lack of focus, and difficulty processing information (BMC Psychiatry).

Another study published in the Journal of Integrative Neuroscience described the rise of “digital dementia”—a kind of cognitive decline linked to prolonged screen exposure and short-form content overload, particularly among young adults (Journal of Integrative Neuroscience).

And if you’ve ever felt mentally foggy after a long night of doomscrolling, you’re not alone.
According to ScienceAlert, consuming a steady stream of emotionally negative content affects attention span, reasoning, and memory—because your brain is stuck in a loop of tension and emotional fatigue.

So maybe it’s not just that we’re being fed someone else’s thoughts.
Maybe we’re also losing the capacity to sit with our own.

And when millions vote based on content a platform decided to show them—
When we lose both attention and intention—

Can we still say the outcome reflects the true voice of the people?

Or just the most optimized one?

When Trolls Create Consensus

There’s a kind of silence that comes from fear.

And then there’s another kind—one that’s drowned out.

In the age of social media, it's not enough to speak. You have to speak louder than the noise. But what happens when the noise is engineered? When the online crowd cheering a politician on isn’t really a crowd—but a machine?

That’s what troll farms are.

They don’t just push a message. They manufacture applause.
They bury dissent not through argument, but through sheer volume.

During the 2016 elections, Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign leaned heavily into Facebook.
But this wasn’t organic growth. According to Asia Times, his team “relied on paid trolls and public figures to propagate misinformation” and flood social media with content designed to both praise and protect him.

That wasn’t campaigning.
That was narrative warfare.

And it didn’t stop after the elections.
It evolved.

In 2022, Channel News Asia uncovered how Philippine troll farms operate with actual structure—paid teams working in shifts, trained in messaging, using fake accounts, memes, hashtags, and scripted comments to create the illusion of public support.

These aren’t kids goofing off on the internet.
These are paid political weapons.

And some of the most visible pro-government bloggers didn’t just stay online—they got rewarded.
According to Heinrich Böll Stiftung, several were given privileged access to Malacañang. They called themselves “ordinary Filipinos,” proudly not journalists. But they gained more power, more reach, and more credibility in the eyes of the crowd than any verified reporter.

That’s how you erase the middle ground.
That’s how you blur truth.

But people are waking up.

In 2024, House Bill 11178—the Anti-Troll Farm and Election Disinformation Act—was filed to criminalize this kind of manipulation. It proposes up to 12 years in prison and fines of up to ₱10 million for those who run or sponsor troll operations.
(PhilStar)

It's a start.

But laws will only go so far when the public has already been trained to believe what’s loudest, not what’s true.

So we come back to the question:
If support can be paid for…
If public opinion can be manufactured by fake accounts and meme pages…

Then what are we really hearing?

Because that’s not the voice of the people.
That’s a performance.

And if all it takes to simulate the will of the masses is money, time, and a few thousand fake accounts, then “Vox Populi, Vox Dei” becomes meaningless.

It’s not the voice of God.
It’s the echo of whoever paid for the microphone.