Waiting

I went to my precinct to vote before ten in the morning. At the entrance to the school, poll watchers wearing the colors of their parties talked to each other excitedly. Near the flagpole, a group of youth volunteers waited at a table to assist voters in finding their precincts. It was hot but the heat did not seem to discourage the persons who were trooping to vote.

Just a few meters away, a crowd milled around the entrance of the classroom where I was supposed to vote. I bumped into a woman who grumbled that voting in previous years was so much easier and that she wished that the old system would be returned. She said that she was going home and not voting anymore. She had arrived at eight in the morning and was still unable to vote.

I went inside the classroom labeled "Holding Area" and was told that I had to take a number. They had run out of numbers to give away and were still cutting out colored paper into small pieces when I arrived. After a few minutes, I was given an orange paper that said that I was the eighty-first voter for the fifth batch. In the adjacent room, a woman called on voters holding numbers 20 to 30 of the third batch to line up.

I waited for about twenty minutes and noticed that the line did not seem to move. The people milling around theorized that the machine had broken down. They were starting to get antsy and thirsty. I decided to walk around the school and find a tree to sit under. As noon approached and the sun rose higher, peoples' tempers started to get shorter. I decided to go home and have lunch.

Over an hour later, I sent someone to check if it was my turn to vote. I was told that the third batch was still voting. There were at least one hundred eighty people who were going to vote before I could. It made sense to just stay indoors and save my skin from further damage.

In previous years, I had finished voting in less than fifteen minutes. The results came days later though. This year, I'm hoping that I'll know who our next elected officials will be on the same day. That way, we can all get on with our lives and stop obsessing over the elections. The campaign period was divisive and disagreements among friends over the choice for President sometimes resulted in hurt or angry feelings.

What I liked about the 2010 elections was how much more involved people were in the campaign. Children who could not vote and young voters joined activities in favor of their preferred candidates. Maybe it is an effect of social networking and the ease with which information could be shared with friends. Social networking was available in 2007 but it was not utilized as much as it was now. I don't recall anyone posting anything about Fernando Poe Jr. or Gloria Macapagal Arroyo then. I suspect that no one captured the imagination of youth voters until Noynoy Aquino and Gibo Teodoro came along. It could also be because everyone is fed up with Arroyo and are excited to see her end her term as President. I also like to imagine that voters finally got it and realized the connection between picking the wrong leaders and the kind of life that they will have for the next six years.

I'm still waiting for my turn to vote as I write this column. I'll wait as long as I have to. I want to be part of change.

* * *

Email: [email protected]