Anti-vote buying campaign launched

CEBU, Philippines - Months ahead of the 2016 elections, church-based groups launched its campaign against vote buying in the polls.

Dilaab Movement and Couples for Christ (CFC) launched the “I Vote Good” campaign intended to encourage voters to rethink the value of their vote and to recognize that every individual vote matters.

 The campaign was launched during an organized Discernment-Recollection for Election Stakeholders and Candidates held in Cebu City last February 15.

 Fr. Carmelo Diola, Dilaab’s chairman, emphasized the importance of electing into office people of integrity who espouse Christian values.

 “What are you doing for your country?” He posed this question while stressing the need to help the country promote integrity with proper discernment.

He said choosing to vote good is to evaluate each candidate carefully, including their values and conscience, saying that one’s future depends on the leadership of the chosen leader.   He said one must not settle for the “lesser evil” but must seek for “at least good, moving towards good, good.”

 He lamented that people continue to seek the “lesser evil” due to lack of mechanism or process for forming the voters’ “practical conscience.”

 He said elections are the root of “original sins” including graft and corruption practices because of the candidates’ perspectives of “winning at all costs” and “election as investment and public service as business.”

 “Philippine politics—the way it is practiced—has been most hurtful of us as a people. It is possibly the biggest bane in our life as a nation and the most pernicious obstacle to our achieving of full human development,” he said, citing the 1997 Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the Philippines’ Pastoral Exhortation on Philippine Politics.

 He cited a 2007 survey of Social Weather Stations, showing that 21 percent of the voters will say “I will vote for a candidate if I will benefit even if most won’t”, while 79 percents will say “I will vote for a candidate if most will benefit even if personally I won’t.”

 Other “missing links” in having good elections and politics, he said, are a “call to a beyond-the-usual; engagement of the church; and without neglecting the usual.”

 Mayren Cogtas, project coordinator of Dilaab, said that to address these “missing links,” the group will organize gatherings to discuss the issues and campaign house to house.

She said they will conduct the LASER test or the Lifestyle, Action, Supporters, Election Conduct and Reputation, a tool for listening for both candidates and voters which is a way of discerning or listening to one’s thoughts, feelings, and motivation for entering public service and having an honest and clean elections.

 “We are aiming to change the  Philippine  politics  one  sitio at a time,” she said, adding, it is the first step in starting an honest, interactive conversation with the voters and all other election stakeholders.

 Moreover, he also emphasized the importance and value of “listening with empathy” with a talk on pastoral accompaniment, the call of the times.

 Diola highlighted the importance of tuning in to God’s voice and explained that the ability to tune-in is not immediate. — (FREEMAN)