Patchwork of an election

This is a good time to reexamine just how and why we have elections. If elections are essential to a democracy, we have not been good at it. On the contrary, every election in the Philippines seems to drive us to become increasingly anti-democratic with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. It has not helped that we had been once an American colony and susceptible to its interference. We get a larger share of the superpower’s intervention to make it into their image of “Jeffersonian democracy.” If we were up to it we should send a clear message to the American government. It is time that our leaders and opinion makers to step forward and tell Obama of our displeasure with their policies towards our country.

Speaking to the Arab world in Cairo he said “I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years, and much of this controversy is connected to the war in Iraq. So let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.”

 New Yorker’s George Packer wrote “Obama has rightly felt the need to cleanse the air of the arrogance and the folly of his predecessor. “There is no more American moralizing or hectoring about freedom, no simplistic division of the world into good and evil. Instead of “with us or against us,” the key phrase in Obama’s foreign policy has been “mutual interest and mutual respect.”

That too, should also be the guiding principle of our relations with them. We should be less timid even if we are a small country. We should harness the force of the ideas from our colonial struggle and articulate them. And they are as grand as any other country or people bent on pursuing their self-determination and identity.

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Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong scoffed at suggestions his country might be better off if it were to have “election every four years.”

Singapore may not be a showpiece for Jeffersonian democracy but it has provided jobs, education, health care and other basic needs to its citizens. It has, to my mind, the correct view of politics and election as it should be. It is directed towards efficient governance.

Contrast that with the Philippines and the recent election we have just had. We collectively spent time and money in the billions to elect leaders from the elite to rule over us yet again. The new automated system only meant a faster count of the wrong people to govern us. From this democratic exercise of an election a leader emerged with nothing to show except his name and his parents’ legacy of “democracy”.

Certainly, Obama’s new thinking was not practiced in the Philippines in the last election with the active interference from the United States, that were said to be both covert and overt. The overt came from former US Ambassador Kristie Kenney who preempted the debate on charter change by appearing on ANC television to promote honest elections. The overt comes from a wide range of factors. But one I would certainly look at would be the Freidrich Naumann Foundation and how it worked closely with the Roxas-Drilon wing of the Liberal Party. (Google to know more about it and its history in Philippine elections). The problem is that our own leaders fall short of demanding “mutual respect and mutual interest.” Filipinos in general fell for the simplistic approach to the problems of the country by supporting the view that the administration was evil and the opposition was good.

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Meanwhile, strange happenings during the election continue to haunt the new automation system. It may not have been that honest after all. PCOS machines were found in the house of a Smartmatic-TIM technician in Sitio Tanag. The voting machines were in the home of Smartmatic technician Felipe de Leon and raised fears the machines might have been used to cheat in the elections against Mayor Lito Gatlabayan.

There were also reports from poll watchers that flash cards were being destroyed.

The same is true with contests for higher positions. One of the first to question the automated election was former secretary Lito Atienza who was running for mayor of Manila against incumbent mayor Alfredo Lim. He is set to file his protest. An assistant who was a computer expert discovered PCOS that may have been loaded with results even before election day.

 Former Presidential Assistant for North Luzon Rene Diaz, a candidate for representative of the 1st District of Nueva Ecija will also challenge the integrity of the results of the canvassing because of the “apparent failure of the automated system to transmit results of the polls.”

Reliable sources said all such cases would be investigated. Diaz said the onus is on the Comelec and Smartmatic to investigate and explain the failure of PCOS machines to transmit results. More explosive revelations are expected before the winning presidential and vice-presidential candidates can even be proclaimed.

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According to reports, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux of New York rushed the publication of Miguel Syjuco’s magnum opus “Ilustrado” to be in time for the May 2010 elections. I got my copy from the National Book Store.

 I can see why the publishers would do so. With all the talk on how Philippine politics is dominated by families of the oligarchy Miguel Syjuco’s book is an eye-opener. Syjuco is himself a son of an elite family. I know his parents personally and I was pleasantly surprised to learn about him and how he left a life of comfort to take up menial jobs to sustain him while he wrote “Ilustrado”. It is almost unbelievable that someone, a Filipino at that, would give up his affluence to write a book.

I don’t know that it mattered to many Filipinos if they had read his book before voting for a president on May 10. The winner of that contest was another son of the elite - Noynoy Aquino. The latter’s path was traditional and expected. There are no surprises there. But Syjuco is exceptional and deserved the praises heaped on him both for the book and the effort and courage it took to write it.