"I DON'T understand; my FB friends are all 'pink.' Why did we lose?" "I don't understand why Robin Padilla won." These are just some of the posts that I see in my social media feeds. Most of the posters, however, are professionals living comfortable middle- to upper-class lives.
Why does understanding the Filipino masses remain an enigma to many, so much so that many national candidates and their followers failed to win their hearts? Who is the Filipino "masa?" The Filipino masses are defined in terms of their income, based on a paper by Dr. Jose Ramon G. Albert, et. al. of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies. They are composed of the "poor" — households with five members that earn less than P10,957 per month — and the "low income" — those that earn between P10,957 and P21,914 per month. At the time of the study in 2018, they comprised 55.2 percent of the total population.
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