15th Congress must revise our election code

Now that the May 10 elections are officially over, our focus shifts on other election-related issues, like the expected electoral protests or whether the Commission on Elections (Comelec) would crack the whip on excessive spending of the candidates. There are rules governing the expenses of political parties and individual candidates; it would be interesting to note what the Comelec would do about those candidates who violated the Comelec rules.

I remember quite well that three weeks before the May 10 elections, a group monitoring the tv ads of Presidential candidates already pointed out that Liberal Party (LP) Noynoy Aquino and Nacionalista Party (NP) bet Sen. Manny Villar were supposed to have already spent more than the allowable tv spots. But all this seems to have been put in the wastebasket; therefore, it is safe to assume that none of these violating winning or losing candidates will be sanctioned by the Comelec. So why put all those rules in the first place if the Comelec is not serious in implementing them?

At this point, I would like to see the 15th Congress come up a with proposal to revise our Electoral Code. Too many people (especially the winners) are singing praises to the PCOs machines despite the reality that it took the Comelec a month to tell the Filipino people that Jejomar Binay won the Vice-Presidential race. I have said it here many times already that if the PCOs machines were that good, they should have simultaneously come up with the results for the Presidential and Vice-Presidential race.

We have also pointed out that for decades, the Comelec was always perceived as one of the most corrupt government agency. I still find it hard to believe that just because they are using automated counting machines, Comelec officials are no longer corrupt. This is something that is just too hard to believe!

A case in point is the latest corruption scam that plagued the poll body with the overpriced ballot secrecy folders. This scam was brought to the eyes of the public because of two whistleblowers. But guess who is investigating this scam? The Comelec itself! How can we get into the bottom of this mess if the people who might be a party to this corruption are the same ones running the Comelec? The Senate Blue Ribbon Committee should be conducting this investigation and hopefully, it would not be for their usual excuse of “in Aid of Legislation.”

I’m also surprised why the Office of the Ombudsman is very silent on this case. This should bring us to the question whether or not the Ombudsman has no jurisdiction over the Comelec. If there is something that this country direly needs, it is an investigating body that is totally independent of government agencies so we can truly begin to see some transparency in the way our government officials do their job.

I’m glad that President-elect Noynoy Aquino during his first press conference after his proclamation mentioned that the first order of business on July 1 is to get an inventory of all the problems that he inherited from the Arroyo administration. At least that is a start. But in fairness to the Arroyo administration, some of the nation’s problems go as far back as the Cory Administration, which the later Presidents did not care to address.

One such problem that continues to plague us today is our lack of power. If we are suffering from those pesky rotational brownouts, it is because of the reality that the rest of the Philippines (not just Metro Manila) has also grown and developed on their own. Tourism development is a good example, which was one of the backbone programs of the Arroyo Administration. A case in point is the tourism in CamSur or in Bohol, which no doubt took away some tourists from Cebu. But I don’t blame them for doing so. We should blame ourselves for our complacency.

One of the biggest letdowns of the Cory Administration was her shutting down the Bataan Nuclear Powered Plant (BNPP). Hopefully Noynoy Aquino’s administration can undo what his mother did and bring this country to the nuclear age to finally solve our humungous power needs. For too, we’ve been bombarded by the ill-effects of a nuclear disaster, especially that the famous Chernobyl incident happened just when the Aquino Administration just took the reins of government from the Marcos Dictatorship.

But those were different times. Today, our economically stable neighbors like Japan or Taiwan rely heavily on nuclear power. If something happens to their nuclear plants, we will get affected just the same. So we might as well join or rejoin the nuclear club and finally have a stable power that we so badly need for our economic growth and stability.

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