Unsettled

When Regional Trial Court Pangasinan Branch 53 set aside the machine count in favor of the manual count in last year’s Rosales vice mayoral contest, serious questions about jurisdiction and the reliability of our electoral counting system were raised.

The court reversed the earlier result that declared John Isaac Kho the winning vice mayoral candidate. On the basis of a manual recount, his rival was declared the winner.

We did not expect the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to take the trial court’s ruling sitting down. Late last week, the poll body issued a preliminary injunction blocking the implementation of the trial court ruling.

Meanwhile, Kho filed an administrative complaint with the Supreme Court through its Judicial Integrity Office against the presiding judge of RTC Pangasinan Branch 53. The judge is currently applying for a higher court position.

Kho’s complaint alleges gross ignorance of the law, manifest bias and violation of the New Code of Conduct for the Philippine Judiciary. Complainant claims the complaint is intended to ensure accountability and adherence to proper procedure in resolving election protests.

The Comelec’s injunction along with the filing of an administrative complaint expands the scope of what had seemed to be a minor election protest. The trial court’s ruling raised questions about the accuracy of the automated counting system. With both the injunction and the administrative complaint, the issue now includes the proper exercise of judicial discretion in election disputes.

Since many election protests eventually end up in court, the resolution of the issues involving judicial discretion will affect the handling of future electoral protests. At stake is not only the public confidence in the reliability of machine counting but also the continued availability of judicial relief for electoral protests.

In the Rosales case, the court’s manual recount produced a different result from the machine tally. The court upheld the manual count. Critics of the current counting technology might have found reinforcement.

At this point, the whole range of issues remains unsettled. This will be a matter to be sorted out in two separate arenas: the Supreme Court and the Comelec.

In the present set-up, courts are empowered to examine election results. The poll body’s jurisdiction over elections is not absolute. Automated counting systems are subject to external scrutiny. The Rosales case allows us to more finely determine the boundaries between an independent judiciary and a constitutional body tasked with ensuring fair and honest elections.

What is important is that ultimately, the issues involved in this case are resolved credibly. Our institutions are precisely engineered to ensure accountability. They do not unravel because disputes occur.

When accountability is effectively enforced, this strengthens our democratic system rather than destabilizes it. But it is not always easy to see where the lines must be drawn.

Machines may err. Judges may err. But we have to continue working to perfect our processes and ensure checks and balances are maintained.

The credibility of our elections is what matters above all.

Forty years

How time flies!

All our memories of those four sleepless nights remain fresh. All the heroism that made the EDSA uprising possible must be celebrated. All the accidents of history that enabled an oppressed people to reclaim democracy remains valid for study.

If there is less joyous commemoration today, it is not because the uprising lacked validity. It is because we seem to have squandered the opportunities this glorious moment opened.

The dialectic between revolution and restoration was evident in the period leading up to the actual uprising. There were always sharp, even fundamental disagreements, among the many groups and factions engaging the forces of dictatorship. There was never any real consensus about what to do and where the nation should go after unshackling.

The squabbling continued after the tyranny was deposed. It was a manner of resolution that most did not expect. No one really knew how to manage the outcomes. The past was never really purged.

When representative democracy was reinstated after the brief and relatively bloodless uprising, it appears the inertia of restoration dominated the dialectic. A few token concessions were given to widening political participation – mainly in the form of a faulty party-list system of representation – but the oligarchy continued in its grip over the nation’s evolution. We transitioned from authoritarianism to oligopoly, from single-party rule to the chaos of a non-existent party system.

We saw the results of all the opportunities left to waste. The nation went the full cycle from the Sick Man of Asia to the new Sick Man of Asia. Our neighbors, with better state direction, are all passing us by. We are last on the list on nearly every measure of progress.

Things have not improved. In many ways, they have worsened. The poverty rate, the quality of education that is our only real path to progress, the hollowing out of our manufacturing and the crisis afflicting our agriculture. We have missed every development goal. Today, we are barely managing economic expansion. Our growth rate is only marginally above population growth.

When we stood at the barricades, we had only one thought in mind: expel the tyranny. When we eventually dismantled the barricades, we also abandoned the task of visioning for the nation.

Forty years after, we remain confused. Democracy is not a form of public entertainment. It should be a preferred manner of effective governance.