EDITORIAL - No rush for reforms

The continuing political tumult started with accusations of vote-rigging. Nearly a year later, the system that provides opportunities for rigging the vote remains intact. Several of the Commission on Elections commissioners during whose watch the purported vote-rigging took place in 2004 also remain in office. They will be the ones to count the votes using the same system in any electoral exercise, including a snap election. This can only guarantee that whatever the results of snap polls, political turbulence is unlikely to stop.

Instead of dreaming that President Arroyo will experience an epiphany and resign like Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, even without prodding from a respected king, it will be more productive for everyone to give urgency to electoral reforms. This takes more work than chanting slogans and displaying placards demanding the resignation of yet another Philippine president. But we must all start hankering down to serious work if we want democracy to succeed in this country.

The housecleaning should start at the Comelec. Curiously, however, even the opposition has shown little interest in overhauling the poll body. The Office of the Ombudsman has also been slow in acting on a graft complaint against Comelec commissioners despite orders from the Supreme Court. Those with the power to kick out Comelec officials apparently prefer to simply wait for all the concerned officials to retire.

Last week President Arroyo named government peace negotiator Rene Sarmiento to the Comelec. There will be two more vacancies in the poll body this year. Those changes will be cosmetic, however, if there are no corresponding reforms in the electoral system itself. The way opposition lawmakers are pushing for yet another quick fix to a corrupted political system, those reforms are not high on anyone’s agenda. At the House of Representatives, bills on electoral reforms have been languishing for years.

Even without the calls for a snap election, those reforms should take on urgency as the 2007 mid-term elections approach. And even if the elections are scrapped, it can only happen in line with the proposed shift to a parliamentary system. That shift will be part of constitutional amendments that must be submitted to the people for ratification. Who will conduct such a plebiscite? The Comelec, using the same electoral system. And yet there is no rush for electoral reforms.