Whack Your Lawmaker

Those who enjoy the online games Whack Your Ex and Whack Your Boss should develop something similar called Whack Your Senator (or Congressman). The Whack Your… series can gross you out. It caters to your inner murderer, or at least your inner human rights violator. And it can be hilariously entertaining.

With all the worms now crawling out of the congressional woodwork and delaying the national canvass, Whack Your Lawmaker is sure to be a big hit in this country. And the no-tech grandstanding characters in the 14th Congress won’t even know how to access the site.

Canvassing is supposed to be simple. The joint congressional session tallies the votes as recorded in the certificates of canvass submitted by the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

The joint session is not supposed to tackle challenges to election results, including complaints about electronic cheating; the job belongs to the Supreme Court, sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal.

Last night, on the third day of the resumption of session, the canvass finally got underway, with the opening of ballot boxes from overseas. It looked so much like the manual tally of the past, with the same long wait ahead for the nation.

Fortunately, the diplomatic community is jumping the gun on the congressional slowpokes and congratulating the candidate who by all indications has won the presidential race, Sen. Benigno Aquino III. Maybe the diplomats know something Joseph Estrada and Jamby Madrigal don’t?

Yesterday the ambassadors of China and Japan called on Aquino at his Times Street home. Both envoys committed their countries’ assistance in Philippine development efforts under the new administration.

Chinese Ambassador Liu Jianchao’s courtesy call was made on the same day that reports came out about the filing in court of graft charges in connection with the aborted ZTE broadband deal.

Liu, a former foreign ministry spokesman, is by far the most open and accessible among all the Chinese ambassadors ever assigned here, and he is not one to shy away from controversial topics. Facing the press together with Aquino, Liu committed Chinese cooperation in fighting corruption in the Philippines. He also expressed his government’s readiness to receive documents from the Philippine side that could lead to an investigation of ZTE’s role.

Such public statements cannot be taken lightly, considering that ZTE is one of the corporate giants leading China’s push to go global. The multinational is a source of Chinese pride. I think the Chinese realize that going global involves the use of best practices and cleaning up their act. A Chinese ambassador does not make such statements to a candidate who will end up being declared as a loser in the presidential race.

Used to sparring with the foreign media, Liu also shot back, when asked why he was meeting with a candidate who had not yet been officially proclaimed, that he saw no reason why he shouldn’t.

A lawyer suffering from arrested development begged to disagree, and threatened yesterday to file charges with the Ombudsman against diplomats who have paid a courtesy call on Aquino. We can’t wait to hear what the lawyer plans to do with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who personally conveyed his best wishes to Aquino in a phone call.

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Instead of giving the international community additional reason to laugh at the Philippines, publicity-hungry lawyers should file charges against those who failed to report to authorities purported offers to cheat for a fee.

Curiously, all the stories are coming only from losing candidates, their relatives or supporters.

Public officials in particular should have reported to authorities – and immediately, before the elections – anyone who had approached them with offers to manipulate the vote.

After the masked man who resembled a koala started looking more like a con artist than a poll fraud whistle-blower, the losing candidates linked to him have retreated, hoping that the whole thing would fade away like a boil. But this looks like an attempt to sabotage the elections, and those responsible must be identified and penalized, including Koala Boy.

Filipinos are willing to wait in line for up to five hours to cast their ballots, even in the scorching summer heat. In this country, voting is truly seen as an inalienable right and a sacred duty; people believe every single vote counts. Elections must not be treated as a joke, as Koala Boy and his handlers have done.

The vote must also not be treated as cheap entertainment, courtesy of that growing line of losers complaining of automated cheating.

Curiously, too, some candidates who are claiming to have been cheated are not questioning the election results in the cases of their winning relatives or friends.

The prime example, deposed President Joseph Estrada, is not questioning the accuracy of the results that placed his son Jinggoy near the top of the winning 12 in the Senate race. Those same election returns are being used in the vote tally for president and vice president.

Neither is Erap questioning the apparent victory of his running mate Jejomar Binay, based on the same returns, and even if close-ups of Erap’s filled out ballot showed he did not vote for a vice president.

Having proclaimed the 12 winning senators, the Comelec is sure to have already tallied the winners for the top two positions in the land. Why prolong the agony of the losers with a long wait? Why inflict the whining sore losers on the public, who should be taking their complaints, if these are truly valid, to the Comelec and not to Congress or the press?

Probably because most of those conducting the inquiry are losers themselves, or whose relatives are losers.

Techies, there’s a market here for Whack Your Lawmakers.