EDITORIAL - How the system works

The Supreme Court may have already decided the case involving who is the real winner in the congressional race in the fourth district. But the tug-of-war between soon-to-be-unseated Benhur Salimbangon and soon-to-be-seated Tining Martinez doesn't look as if it's to end just yet.

Even if the Supreme Court may have decided on the case with finality, as what its decision insists, there are still quite a few options that Salimbangon can employ to at least delay the inevitable until the May 10 elections swing around.

Of course Tining can force the issue by presenting himself before Congress during any of its last remaining session days before taking a break, probably even this Monday, as what his camp has promised.

But even if Tining gets to sit in the chair that the Supreme Court declared is rightfully his, the development will hardly matter much anymore in realizing what he sought to do when first he stood for election for that seat in 2007.

In other words, other than the physical conquest of a swivel chair and the emotional high of eventual vindication, it is really too late to be the congressman that he wants to be. The sad thing about it is that it is not even his fault.

The blame rests squarely on the existing system we have in resolving electoral protests. The system works so slowly that we begin to suspect it is intended to be that way. And that it was programmed that way in order to please everybody.

If anything is apparent at all, it should be apparent right at the outset. We could not believe it should take up to the last minute each time to decide cases. That it does so makes us suspect the system was built not really to resolve political issues but to further politics.

For how can we believe otherwise when one party is allowed to enjoy the contested distinction for nearly a full term before cutting the enjoyment just in the nick of time to allow the rightful party to be mollified, which after an agonizing time, may be all that he seeks.

The system, with all its various parts humming together, understands perfectly the dynamics of Philippine politics and the heirarchy of political desires, which can be described thus: If you cannot be gratified first, at least be vindicated next.