EDITORIAL - Get your act together

If you’re still hoping for the modernization of Philippine elections by 2004, forget it. You can also forget orderly manual elections. We all saw what happened in the May 14 polls. The party-list system flopped as usual, despite three years to prepare for it. The common poster area was a joke. To this day there are still questions on who placed 12th and 13th in the Senate race – a difference that can mean three more years in Congress for the 12th placer. President Arroyo had to appoint an officer-in-charge for Caloocan, where the canvassing has been as messy as the elections in the city. If the Comelec can’t get its act together even in one city, how do you expect it to get its act together in the entire country? 

True, the Comelec must grapple with problems that have marred Philippine elections for decades: guns, goons and gold, patronage politics that subverts attempts to limit election spending. But these problems have been aggravated by bitter infighting among the current group of Comelec commissioners. Not even during the time of the commissioner dubbed as the "kissing lolo" did the poll body seem so divided.

It seems no working day passes without Comelec members exchanging barbs. Orders of the Comelec chairman are overturned by one group; in turn, he reverses resolutions initiated by this group. These days they are embroiled in controversies surrounding the Comelec’s modernization program. Both groups have their respective ideas about poll modernization. Instead of talking it out like civilized grown-ups in public service normally do, they have been carping against each other.

This has to be the most chaotic Comelec ever. And the biggest lo-sers are Philippine voters, who are sure to go through another electoral exercise come 2004 that is antiquated, disorderly and marred by massive fraud. A messy Comelec is a sure guarantee of messy elections. Unless Comelec commissioners can get their act together, they should consider quitting, if they have any love left for their country.