Lessons learned
The automation of our elections has indeed achieved its main purpose of bringing about a peaceful, clean, orderly, and expeditious process in electing our national and local public officials. Voters somehow feel assured that their votes are properly counted by the machines and the counting is done quickly, accurately and transparently. This is especially true in the last elections when the winners are already known within 24 hours and most candidates readily accepted the results except a few which are quite close to call. In this regard, the Commission on Election (Comelec) must be commended.
The Comelec however must not only ensure that the votes are quickly, accurately and transparently counted and the results immediately known. It must also, and more importantly, look into the kind of votes fed into the machines and see to it that they are votes cast by the voters for free and without any good and valuable consideration given by the candidates. In other words, the Comelec must prevent vote buying. It must ensure that the election is also an “honest” election.
In our country, it is already common knowledge and a reluctantly accepted fact that vote-buying is a rampant practice during every election, both in the national and more especially in the local level. And apparently, this practice remains unabated even in the last election. Most candidates resort to this practice in order to win elections. It is done in many subtle ways that look legit particularly the last few weeks before the voting. The more common way of doing it is to hire the voters as the poll watchers of the candidates who are paid a handsome amount for simply standing by and idling around the polling area after voting. Another way is to buy out every household by giving them basic food supplies, medicines and other necessities, in exchange for their votes. Each household bought is properly marked and identified.
Apparently, vote buying is more rampant in areas with a smaller voting population where candidates need lesser number of votes to ensure victory and thus can easily afford to buy them. Sometimes two or more candidates resort to vote buying such that if some voters have already been “bought,” they can still accept the higher “price” offered by another candidate in order to augment their earnings. Thus it has been said that in these areas, the losing candidate is “out-bought” and not “out-voted.”
Vote buying is indeed the main reason for the proliferation and continuing increase of political dynasties and other political kingpins or warlords especially in poor rural and urban areas. They are the ones who can afford to dispense political patronage in order to remain in power and get richer and richer as the poor voters get poorer and poorer.
Comelec must therefore be stricter and more determined in enforcing the laws against vote-buying. It has to monitor more closely the campaign expenditures of the candidates and see to it that the limits on the campaign expenses fixed by our election laws are strictly observed. Even at this stage, it is already quite clear that some candidates have already exceeded the limit as can be seen by the highly expensive political ads aired in various media of communications, as well as the posters and other propaganda materials indiscriminately posted everywhere in their locality and all over the country.
But obviously, Comelec alone cannot prevent and totally eradicate this detrimental and harmful practices undoubtedly polluting our election and destroying its credibility. Even if we have enough laws prohibiting and penalizing vote-buying, it cannot be totally eliminated unless we get rid of these candidates who resort to such practice. The best, albeit improper, way of getting rid of them that comes to mind at this time, is perhaps to instruct the poor and exploited voters to accept their money but vote for their opponent or any other candidate of their preference who does not engage in vote buying. Or as some people used to say, “tanggapin ang kanilang pera nguni’t iboto ang kursunada.”
The last elections have also imparted so many other lessons and realizations not heretofore seen and experienced. On the national level especially in the presidential elections, we have seen that a great majority of our people are really quite fed up and disgusted with P-Noy administration and his daang matuwid. They really want some drastic and revolutionary changes which Duterte appears to represent. Hence an overwhelming number of people voted for him not necessarily because they like him but because they hate Aquino. It is therefore quite clear that Duterte’s overwhelming number of votes can actually be considered as votes against Aquino.
Duterte won overwhelmingly because people want the eradication of poverty and the elimination of political and business oligarchy that has ruled the country since the 1986 people power revolution when the rich became richer and the poor, poorer. They want the improvement of the lives of the poor people in our land not through dole outs and conditional cash transfers but through the more equitable sharing of the country’s resources and wealth. Big business must be more open to giving their employees by sharing their profits and gains more generously and by ensuring security of employment through elimination of contractualization.
On the political aspect, the people voted for Duterte because they want his platforms on Federalism and decentralization of power, unicameral assembly, more autonomy for the local government units, less government spending, less red tape and government intervention. They voted for Duterte because they want to eliminate the drug problem in our country by getting rid of the drug lords, the drug pushers and users. They voted for Duterte because they want to improve peace and order in this country.
Other lessons that we learned come from the close fight in the Vice Presidential elections. What is very obvious here is the truth in the observation that in this country, there are no losers in our election all of them are just cheated. Thus even if there is no final count yet Marcos and his supporters are already crying and accusing Leni Robredo and her party of committing fraud and spreading all kinds of founded rumors in the social media that undermines the credibility of the last election. This kind of paranoid reaction only creates more division and dissension.
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