Just go

If Comelec chairman Sixto Brilliantes feels that he and the job he holds have become discordant, then he should just go. After all, as he claims, the bulk of preparations for next month’s polls is done.

After the latest in a series of rebukes from the Supreme Court, Brilliantes declared he will take a couple of days to think things over. In those couple of days, the Comelec chair announced he will meet with President Aquino before announcing his final decision.

Why in Heaven’s name does Brilliantes think he should meet with the President in the process of weighing his options? Did he want the President to intervene in overturning a judicial ruling?

The poor man seems to forget that he heads an independent constitutional body. Once appointed to it, he is protected by tenure. He is not an officer of the executive branch of government. He is answerable to no one except the law.

Recall that when what seems to be the voice of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was caught on phone tap discussing the progress of the vote count with a Comelec commissioner, the thing produced a scandal. The President of the Republic ought not to be discussing electoral matters with the Comelec, especially during campaign periods.

Neither should the President of the Republic be discussing the merits of a judicial ruling with the Supreme Court. The executive branch and the judiciary are independent and co-equal branches in our format of government. The Court rules on issues brought before it entirely within the paradigm of existing law.

In less than three years, the present administration forced Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez to resign and then pushed the impeachment process against Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona. Then relatively young lawyers were appointed to the bench. The impression is this administration is trying to bring the judiciary into its political grip.

By seeking to draw the presidency in his own battle with the High Court, Brilliantes magnifies concerns about the executive branch undermining the independence of the judiciary.

The political decision to bring Brilliantes to the Comelec was met with much skepticism from the start. Admitting to knowing next to nothing about information technology, he was named to head the electoral authority charged with modernization of our electoral system. His approach to “electoral reform” is trapped in another century: he seems obsessed with suppressing rights and narrowing participation instead of encouraging new and inclusive forms of electoral processes to develop.

Too, Brilliantes spent most of his life as an election lawyer. That ties him up with his former clients, fueling suspicion of partisanship at a time when the Comelec is challenged to assert its independence. He undermines the poll body’s integrity most when he announced he will meet with the President to decide his fate.

It may not seem readily evident, but we confront real and present danger of electoral failure. The integrity of the automated system now in use has been seriously subjected to doubt. There is proprietary debate over the software to be used. This whole process could simply run awry when election day comes.

Brilliantes, whose fitness for the job was questioned from the start, now threatens to quit because the High Court slapped down his decisions that were legally vulnerable to begin with. He, and the other partisans chosen to be commissioners, have not strengthened the public’s faith in our electoral system.

VAT-exempt

Finally, a senatorial candidate advocates exempting computers from the VAT. That simple measure will improve public access to information more palpably than spending a billion pesos more on our decrepit educational system.

During the Ramos years, I advocated strongly to get books and computers (then classified as “toys” in the Customs Code) exempted from duties and taxes. Government’s insatiable desire for more revenues should not get in the way of improving public access to knowledge. After all, the final goal of all government is to raise our nation’s human capital.

When the VAT was introduced, no one remembered to exempt computers which are, today the most powerful and efficient tools for acquiring information. Public policy should have a clear bias towards expanding public access to the means for acquiring knowledge. Our tax policy ought to conform with that overriding concern.

Jack Enrile now declares that among the first things he will do should he win a Senate seat is to push legislation that will exempt instruments of knowledge dissemination from the VAT. That operates on exactly the same principle as exempting food and medicines from the VAT in order to make them more affordable for our people.

Tax luxury cars to high heavens if you must; but keep the instruments of knowledge dissemination outside the VAT net. At the rate “smart phones” are becoming the means for democratizing access to knowledge, the VAT exemptions might have to be extended to these as well.

Jack Enrile makes a strong point here. There is already too much inequality in our society, being tightly in the grip of an irresponsible oligarchy. We can countervail that by democratizing public access to information technology, making them as affordable as possible so that everybody might have these devices.

There are other interesting things in Jack’s mind. He proposes that the Tax Reform Act of 1997 be amended to reduce the income tax rate for individual taxpayers. This will bring relief to the millions of fixed-wage earners who shoulder among the highest income tax rates in the world. A great injustice cries out for bold legislation that puts our citizens’ welfare first.