Artists to lead voter education - GOTCHA by Jarius Bondoc

What’d I tell you? Never before have more politicized citizens and groups taken up the cause of voter education. But it’s not just students and young professionals. Popular committed artists are in the forefront – stage director Bart Guingona, film maker Joey Reyes, musicians Kuh Ledesma, Leah Navarro, Jim Paredes, Trina Belamide, Ryan Cayabyab. Actors and actresses, singers and recording stars, dancers and commercial models. Celebrities all. This is going to be one fun election. Namfrel’s Bill Luz and PPCRV's priests and nuns will be thrilled with such new allies.

Since the artists come from the fun world of showbiz, the forms they will undertake promise to be entertaining – music tapes, comedy skits, street concerts. But their message is serious. Guingona, a prime mover of Artista @Pagbabago, shares with fellow-voter educators three key topics:

• Valuing the vote. One doesn’t just lecture a person who lives hand-to-mouth to not sell his vote. The poor are cynical about elections because, while administrations change, their lives don’t. Voter educators must explain – in the case of A@P, through skits – that the poor can make the system work for themselves. No illusions of overnight success either. But one has got to start somewhere, as in using the power of the ballot.

• Protecting the vote. Politicians old and new enter the contest also with cynical minds. Each suspects that his rival will cheat, so he might as well cheat, too, to at least cancel out the other’s dirty tricks. Voters, who end up losers in any election fraud, must be taught what to look out for. Signs and proof, for instance, of vote buying, ballot tampering, flying voting, fake tallying, dagdag-bawas canvassing. Voter educators can set up street games like "Kuwarta o Balota" that dramatize how pols cheat and how to detect it.

• Exercising the vote. There are candidates and there are candidates. All of them glad-handing and baby-kissing, singing and dancing onstage, promising the moon and the stars. And then there are the candidates, some with sterling records of service yet drowned out by the din of campaign, others new but with brilliant ideas for change and development. Without being partisan, voter educators can publicize the good and bad works and words of candidates in their locales – all for an informed choice.

Guingona’s A@P will focus first on Manila, with 20 road shows lined up. But word has spread about their plans, and voter educators from other cities are asking for their help – and appearance. A@P’s street plays could turn into full-production concert rallies that’ll give political parties a run for their money, or rather, audience.

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It’s the spirit of People Power II, as I said. While a huge number of citizens are going into voter education, many more are banding together for good governance, justice and political reforms.

Members of e-Lagda, which raised millions of signatures for Joseph Estrada’s resignation, have joined e-Leksyon, which posts on the Internet quality standards and fraudulent ways of congressional candidates.

Other groups advocate greater transparency in government dealings. Pagbabago@Pilipinas, for one, is calling for compulsory posting on the Net of agency purchases and biddings, and of officials’ statements of assets and liabilities. A parallel group is working for more accountability.

Labor and youth organizations in the Erap Resign Movement have formed People Power-III, which will assist and monitor the prosecution of Estrada and cronies, and the confiscation of ill-gotten wealth.

Still others have organized themselves into study groups that will draft and lobby for reforms to make elections cheaper and prod citizens to pay accurate taxes. An Anti-Trapo Movement has been born.

The message in all this is that officials are put on notice. With EDSA-II, more citizens will watch government and keep it clean. And they have more tools to do so.

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Let me plug my own little contribution to voter education: a new TV talk show, the only one on open-channel prime time. Balitaktakan (Election 2001), on Zoe Broadcasting Channel 11, will feature candidates for senator, congressman, governor and mayor. Get to know them and their platforms. Every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 7:30-8:30 p.m., starting March 7.

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INTERACTION. John L. Silva, globe.com: We’ve all had it with illegal, indiscriminate campaign posters (Gotcha, 28 Feb. 2001). Buy thick pentel pens, write "trapo" on such posters. Call the HQs of offending candidates, ask them to explain why they’re breaking the law. Get organizations to tear down the posters.

Ched Arzadon, Dagupan: In any company, a job applicant’s biodata is matched with vacancy requirements. Some pay entire departments for selection work. The Comelec must do the same with candidates for senator, congressman, governor or mayor (Gotcha, 26 Feb. 2001).

Francisco Rodino, dot.ca.gov: Regarding your item on Mindanao youths being recruited for a pro-Erap rally, a la EDSA, for P3,000 and a sack of rice, plus roundtrip fare and P500-a-day allowance in Manila (Gotcha, 24 Feb. 2001): If a sack costs P400 and fare is P600, a ten-day effort would cost P9,000 per head. To gather a million to look credible, they’d need billions. Erap will not squander what he got from bribery. Other members of his gang will finance it.

Shawn Gochangco, edsamail.com: Reader Ana Sy-Quia says PNCC is abusive (Interaction, 24 Feb. 2001). She’s too kind. PNCC execs must be sacked for the misery they caused Quezon City – tearing up Visayas Ave. months ago and never restoring it, thus traffic congestion.

Alfredo Dacanay, hotmail.com: Loi Ejercito will win a Senate seat since voters sympathize with her years of suffering from womanizer Erap (Gotcha, 21 Feb. 2001)? Did she sympathize with voters while her husband was plundering?

Eddyx Ballesteros, vasia.com: Public school teachers complain of too many salary deductions. But these are loans that they took out and are responsible for. While a P12,000-monthly pay is small, they should live within their means.

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YOUR COMPUTER. Newly-detected political viruses are wreaking havoc on cyberspace, warns www.apohikingsociety.com.ph. Its Politically Incorrect section lists a dozen, among them:

• Erap virus . . . creates aliases of all your valuable files.

• The 11 Senators virus . . . initially will refuse to open files, but will eventually consent after much complaining from you.

• Estelito virus . . . causes prominent people to just show up.

• Miriam virus . . . screens your hard disk, chooses any three files at random and attempts to expel them.

• John O. virus . . . attaches to data but instead of being filed in a folder, it prefers a closet.

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