Another bishop taunts reforms

Once again a Catholic bishop, one of 121, made headlines in politics. Criticizing a Senate bill that partially would automate the 2007 elections, he sneered that electronic counters will not keep the voting clean for a change; it’s only people who will. The bishop officially spoke for his colleagues, so presumably they agree with him. The most vocal of them in fact habitually belittle efforts to improve any system, moralizing instead that only change in individuals can make things better.

It’s a wonder why bishops are pessimists about systems. Christianity is a religion of triumph – of good over evil. Though preaching humility, it does not promote defeatism – like, that no system can ever work to help man be good. Catholicism in fact has a set of guidelines, a system if you will, to stick to the straight and narrow path, through faith, good works, receiving the Sacraments, and more.

So what’s wrong with automating elections? Nothing. In fact, despite what one man of the cloth says, everything’s right with it. As perfected over the decades in other lands, hi-tech balloting not only zips up the counting. More important, it sets trap upon trap to prevent fraud. Thus, it can be the core of a new voting system in which people’s choices duly triumph.

Electronic counters will tally votes in precincts within seconds, so in polling centers in minutes, and possibly of a whole town in an hour. That will discourage many forms of cheating. There would be less temptation to snatch ballot boxes, tamper with tally forms, or operate dagdag-bawas (vote padding-shaving) at canvassing. Coupled with other system reforms – say, swift compiling of national votes and declaring of winners, fining nuisance poll protesters, or subsidizing political parties – automation can begin to purge elections of bad candidates and voters. Sure, some will still find ways to buy or sell votes, terrorize contenders into withdrawing, or overspend. But automation is the place to start in laying down a trustworthy system. People will learn, even if slowly, to abide by and defend the system. More so if the present Comelec brass, already tainted by the Garci CD on election rigging and a Supreme Court finding of supply bid fixing, would resign to give way to eminent replacements.

But back to this scorn for systems, bishops use the same argument to disparage sincere efforts to improve the economy and politics via Charter Change. For them, it’s not the system, but the people that’s rotten.

To begin with, bishops should not meddle in the debate by intoning moral duties. One of them, Bishop Jesus Varela, counsels against bias with "morally neutral" issues: "In the matter of Charter Change from the present presidential form of government to the alternative parliamentary form, either side is morally defensible. The Church can exist under either form of government, provided religious freedom and other basic human freedoms are guaranteed. For a parish to display mega-banners proclaiming ‘No to Cha-Cha’, or a clergyman marching behind such slogan, is to unfairly antagonize those otherwise loyal parishioners who advocate conscientiously the contrary position, which is equally tenable from the moral point of view."

Sadly, Bishop Varela’s is a lonely voice. His colleagues prefer to demonize their diocesans although half of the latter, from surveys, appear to prefer Charter Change. By saying it’s people who are bad, they in effect sermonize that it’s pointless to change the system. So, keep the presidential form, in which candidates by necessity overspend P2-5 billion and winners rule as virtual monarchs. And, oh, in which leaders of religions can lobby for adoption of this policy or appointment of that devotee to office.

True, it takes good people to lay down a good system. But a good system, made up of people and procedures, can transform bad to good. An example is Subic Freeport, in which most everyone turns into courteous drivers upon entering.

On the other hand, if it’s people who are rotten and not the system that makes them so, the bishops had better explain one thing to the faithful. How come, for two long millenniums, the clergy has not made man good? Maybe it’s their system of proselytizing that’s wrong. Or maybe it’s because they condone each other’s sins – like that bishop who boasted of harboring escaped Magdalo rebels plotting to bomb the Batasan, and then taunted the government to try and arrest him for so doing.

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To be sure, there’s an element that can trigger good systems and good men. It’s called leadership.

It can be complex to explain, but here’s an illustration:

Since Manuel Villar became Senate President in July, the chamber passed 13 new laws. By contrast, under his immediate predecessor, the Senate crunched out only one law per quarter.

Among the enactments was the Bio-Fuels Act, stuck in the Senate for a year but passing unanimously this time. Others are to recompense victims of torture and killings during Marcos’ martial law, improved tax collecting, and automated election. The Senate also swiftly approved the supplemental P46-billion budget for 2006 and the P500-million fund to repatriate Filipinos from the Lebanon war.

There were hitches, like six near fisticuffs among bellicose senators, and filibustering on the Anti-Terrorism Bill. But the Senate was able to pass local bills to found or amend the charters of five provinces and cities. As a result Senate bickering with the House of Representatives subsided.

Other significant bills reached final stage: a one-time tax amnesty, a Code for pre-need products and services, expanding the Public Attorney’s Office, and revising the University of the Philippines charter. As of Oct. 12 the Senate Legislative Staff has received 128 committee reports on filed bills since the start of the 13th Congress in July 2004. Of these, more than a third, or 47, came in only when Villar became chamber leader.

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