Keep Partisan Politics Away From Doing Businesses

It's time to consider the whole problem of businesses getting involved in partisan politics in any shape or form. What does partisan politics mean? Here's how the Free Dictionary would define it:

1. favoritism shown to members of one’s own party, faction, sect, or cause.
2. strong adherence to the tenets of one’s party, faction, sect, or cause. — partisan, n., adj.

A huge problem related to media related outlets in the Philippines is where networks play partisan politics. For example, ABS-CBN claims that it's "walang kinikilingan" or sides with nobody yet it tends to be biased with the news -- how can you claim you side with no one if you don't hear both sides? It's just like how Jim Paredes' side was interviewed but what about the Duterte supporters on the 31st anniversary of the EDSA Revolution?

Let's give an example of how partisan politics is done. I could give you an example where a Duterte supporter refuses to serve a customer just because the other person comes from the Yellows or vice versa. Some social media platforms would suddenly remove pages and disable accounts (without warning) that don't agree with their political views rather than because rules were broken. Sometimes, some people who broke the rules suddenly get their accounts back after they were supposedly "permanently deleted" or harass the privacy of those who don't agree with their views.

The practice of doing partisan politics affects businesses seriously. Can you imagine how much opportunity cost there is in refusing people just because they have a different political view? It's like one would refuse Bam Aquino or Kiko Pangilinan from eating in their restaurant for simply being a from the other party -- never mind that the two could have helped increase one's revenue. Another would be refusing to hear the other side of the story because one is a Yellow and the other is not a Yellow. I mean, if everybody paid for their ads to be shown then shouldn't they be shown? Pocketing the money without doing the deal is definitely not a good business practice. It may earn you easy money for now but not more money in the long run due to trust issues.

Doing business must always be in the ground of political neutrality. It doesn't matter what your political affiliation is because the rule of thumb is to serve your customers with what they want and what you can give to them when they want it as long as they can pay for it -- not serve your customers only when they agree with your political views.