Why Candidates Ignore Secular Filipinos?

Because they can. And because the religious block has traditionally held sway over political candidates for a long time. 

While many still consider the Philippines as a very religious country, I think secularism is more prevalent in the Philippines compared to other Southeast Asian neighbours, say, Indonesia and Malaysia where Sharia is practiced. Throughout the history of our republic, our Founding Fathers had the courage to write in our Constitution the ‘separation of church and state’. But the comparison does not end there, nowadays Filipinos are able to practice secularism more freely in society, for example, we were able to unshackle the religious taboo of using birth control by giving women control over their reproduction through the Reproductive Health Law. Our society is more receptive of women’s rights. The recent furore over presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte’s rape joke about the female Australian missionary who was killed in Davao back in 1989 was one example. Filipinos are more sympathetic towards the LGBT community. When Manny Pacquiao dissed gay people calling them ‘worse than animals’; he got the ire of numerous Filipinos, costing him his Nike sponsorship and precious goodwill in the media.

We have a long way to go in terms of educating Filipinos about the dangers of religious fanaticism, but there are good signs that Filipinos are ready to accept secularism as a social and political reality. Of course, we are not about to force politicians to convert to atheism, but we would be more than satisfied to hear them speak in public against religious bigotry and fanaticism from the likes of Pacquiao, support separation of church and state, respect and protect women’s rights, LGBT rights including same-sex marriage, and to support reproductive health, divorce and euthanasia.

There are no official statistics yet as to the exact number of atheists and non-religious people in the Philippines that I know of, but I am optimistic that the number ranges from one to two million Filipinos, mostly college students and in their early twenties. If this is true, we must tap this resource and put it to good use to pressure and lobby political candidates to go our side. The onus is on us to present a united secular front. When Kabataan Representative Mong Palatino sponsored House bill 6330 seeking to ban prayer in government offices, the Catholic Church was in full force in the media and painted the bill as 'suppressing religion', calling it the ‘ban God bill’, while the best the secular movement in the Philippines could do was wrote blogs about it. Almost everyone in the atheist community was nowhere to be found. I know the secular community in the Philippines is still young, but we must be bold and audacious and we need a vision. Remember, we are not alone! We get huge support from numerous secular organizations that recognize the difficulty and hardship of building a secular community. In countries like Bangladesh, secular bloggers are routinely hacked to death by religious fanatics who view atheists and secularists as threats to their religion. We must never let this happen in the Philippines.

At the end of the day, we must use the political system to hold politicians accountable if they defile our secular values. We owe ourselves and future Filipinos to build a society free from religious tyranny and hatred.