33 days left to register for elections in 2004

YOU CARE ENOUGH?: If qualified but not yet registered under the system of continuing registration (under RA 8189), you have only until Oct. 31 to register to be able to vote in the make-or-break election in May 2004.

If you as a citizen-stakeholder stay away from the polls, you would be abdicating your right and your duty to cast your vote on how and by whom our foundering nation should be managed.

Sad to say, countless Filipinos do not care to register and vote, yet they are among the loudest to complain about corrupt and incompetent elective officials. Are you one of these whiners?

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IS IT WORTH IT?: The outlook among Filipinos abroad is dismal. The registration turnout among them is a big damper — only about 90,000 or 1.2 percent of some 7.5 million have bothered to register so far. How come?

Listen to Felipe Soriano, a Filipino in Saudi Arabia, explain in an email to Postscript:

"I am in Yanbu, about 400 kilometers from Jeddah, the nearest place for registration. Why should I travel a total of 800 km just to register?

"(Also,) why should I spend time, effort and money to register when I know that intelligent voters’ votes don’t count for much in our country? If you think about it, the probability that a good president will be voted to office is very low (less than 50 percent).

"And even assuming that a good president will be voted to office this time, if I vote come election, he/she cannot do much in six years, not only due to dirty Philippine politics but also due to the shortness of the term.

"Why go through the process of registering and voting when nothing can be gained in the present system of choosing a leader? Isn’t it a clear exercise in futility?"

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MISGIVINGS: Some of us may disagree with Soriano, but we keep receiving email from far-flung points around the globe basically expressing the same misgivings.

Right here in Manila, a reader code-named by the mobile phone company as HGV 384 texted: "I didnt re-register, I feel my vote wont count anyway. Was disappoint in d spectacle of d primitv, shameful n cheating in our country’s votecounting."

When we texted back to urge him to register and do his duty as a citizen, etc., he responded: " ha ha ha. i used to believe my opinion or an individual opinion matters, but the truth is that they dont. all of us are just pawns."

Another reader, Gery Lomibao of Laguna, texted: "Our country is cursed with greedy and conscienceless leaders."

Reader code-named MFV280 said: "For our country to prosper we’ll just shoot all politicians. It’s gonna be bloody but, hey, eradicating these cretins and vermins…" (he message was cut).

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CONSENSUS: Of course three or four short message do not constitute a consensus. But mind you, what we have been hearing is not the lone voice in the wilderness.

There is this recurring skepticism and defeatism in most of the text and email we have been receiving.

It would suicidal, we think, to ignore these voice echoing through our collective conscience.

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ROXAS REPORT: Trade Secretary Mar Roxas had to grapple yesterday with related questions of national survival at the weekend kapihan at Sulo hotel in Quezon City.

Listening to him discuss (mostly economic) problems and solutions in perspective, we got the impression that he has a road map drawn up in his mind as a key Cabinet secretary and a public official of long standing.

It will take more space than what we have here to outline Roxas’s outlook and approaches to weighty economic problems, but we noted that in the end he confessed that the problem-solving would be easier if we were under a parliamentary system.

He lamented that the presidential setup that we copied from the United States is marked by rigorous checks and balance that have slowed down processes considerably.

He said that we have a better chance of meting out timely solutions if we were in a parliamentary setup.

He said consensus building is easier and translating policy to action is faster in a setup where there is collaboration between the executive and the legislative branch.

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PRICES STABLE: Addressing his area of responsibility, which is trade, he reported that, per market spot reports, inflation has stayed at 3 percent.

Saying that this low inflation figure was believable, he ticked off the prices of rice, chicken, beef, fish, canned goods, etc. to illustrate how prices of household goods, principally those in the food basket, have been holding.

Roxas reported that we have a 90-day supply of rice, and with a huge importation coming up and the harvest season about to start, there will be enough rice at stable prices all the way to 2004.

As for sugar, we have a 60-day supply, which will improve with the milling season having started this month. In fact, he said, the country will have a surplus to be able to export to buyers aside from the usual US importers.

Roxas cited other positive info on electronic products: Every one of some 500,000 Nokia cellular phones sold each year carries a critical chip made in the Philippines. Toshiba in the country makes and ships out around 150,000 laptops each year. Epson in the Philippines, which used to make only the ink cartridges, now makes and exports 500,000 printers each year.

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POLL PLANS: Pressed on political issues, Roxas said he supports President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for president in 2004.

Will he accepts a draft as the vice presidential teammate of President Arroyo, assuming she runs in 2004? He said yes. If she does not run, still he is wiling to be the running mate of the party’s standard bearer.

Given a choice, which would he prefer between being senator (like his father Liberal Party president Gerardo Roxas in pre-martial law days) and being in the Executive department? He said he could do more for the country being an executive.

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U.S. CENSUS: In the US meanwhile, their census bureau released Friday figures showing that poverty rose and income levels went down in 2002 for the second straight year as the economy wiggled out of the first recession in a decade.

The report said the poverty rate was 12.1 percent last year, compared to 11.7 percent in 2001. That means nearly 34.6 million Americans lived under the poverty line, or about 1.7 million more than in 2001.

Median annual household income went down to $42,409, or by 1.1 percent between 2001 and 2002, after accounting for inflation. Households are more or less split 50-50 between those that earned more and those that earned less than the median income.

The estimates, calculated annually by the census bureau, were culled from a survey of 78,000 households taken in March.

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