Wanted ASAP: Electoral reforms

Call it unbelievable, but retired Supreme Court Justice Jose Melo is still awaiting his formal appointment papers as the next chairman of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) before he can assume office. What a country! Justice Melo still hasn’t taken over this Comelec post and he is already mired deep in government bureaucracy. I have always said that the Comelec should not be revamped, it should be overhauled and changed to something like Namfrel, but he can’t even move into his office!

Forgive me for sounding skeptical, but I strongly believe that changing the Comelec is a Herculean task. With the 2010 Presidential elections fast approaching, I doubt if Justice Melo can turn things around even if they appoint a clean and honest Chairman at its helm. What further complicates the work of Justice Melo are the demands by Senators to put a closure to the controversial “Hello Garci scam”. This will certainly distract the attention of the new Comelec chairman from the work of reforming the poll body.

So why don’t you guys make up your minds and decide what are your priorities? Solve the Garci scam or work hard for election reforms? I will put all my bets on election reforms because this is the way to move forward, while insisting on solving the Hello Garci affair is just a step backward into an issue that is already passé. What we need in this country is a total and complete electoral reform. For instance, I too would like to see a closure of the election fraud that happened in the 4th District during the election of Rep. Ben-Hur Salimbangon, but rather than go out and dig into the past. What we expect from Justice Melo is to work out a program so that this kind of election fraud could never be repeated or happen again.

We have a good idea of how that cheating was done in Bogo and of course in many other parts of the country, where ballot boxes were stuffed by election returns bearing only one signature. But opening each ballot box to prove that there was cheating is like forcing a camel into the eye of a needle. I can only hope and pray that this type of cheating would disappear in a reformed Comelec. But to be totally honest, I’m not really looking forward to this because I just might be disappointed.

While we’re still two years away from the 2010 Presidential elections, I would like to believe that this is more than ample time for the Comelec to set up a computerized election system. If there is anything that election-weary Filipinos would like to see is the holding of elections on Monday and seeing the winners on Tuesday morning. If this happens, there won’t be any material time for the election cheats to effect their “dag-dag bawas” operation.

 Again, we are putting all our hopes for a real election reform on the shoulders of one man, Justice Melo; that’s if he finally gets his appointment papers from the bureaucratic mess it’s currently mired in. The problem Justice Melo really faces is lack of material time. Knowing how slow the government bureaucracy works, there are only two sides in the coming polls, either we get new reforms or it will be the same thing like in the last elections.

* * *

Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) approved a one-shot emergency economic package of P75 billion  aimed at stimulating the Philippine economy and protecting it from a possible recession of the US economy. This is a step in the right direction but the question is, how will that money be spent? I hope that it won’t be thrown to our Congressmen so it can be used “In aid of election”, after all the 2010 elections is already very near.

The Arroyo Administration should concentrate on fixing our sorely lacking infrastructure, which is one of our major needs for our growing tourism industry. Here in Metro Cebu, we just got our badly needed funding for the flyover at the Foodland intersection, but everyone knows that because of a serious lack of funding, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) doesn’t even have any program to widen H. Cortes Ave. a  vital road link that cuts across the interior of Mandaue City all the way to the Mandaue Reclamation area.

This two-lane road needs to be widened. It really won’t cost that much because on both sides of this road you can see open pit canals, which by the way also breeds the dreaded Dengue. So let’s come up with a program to cover these canals with huge concrete culverts, then put cement or asphalt over them and voila! we just turned H. Cortes into a four-land road. Believe me, Mandauehanons would be more happy to see this.

If I had my way, I’d expropriate another two lanes from both sides and we’d have a six-lane road, which would certainly decongest the clogged Banilad road and give Mandaue City another major arterial road that links its residential areas into its business and industrial zones. I hope that Mayor Jonas Cortes agrees with our observation.