The Lessons of 2007 Elections

Now that the show’s about to be over, it is time to take stock of the situation and talk about what can be done to prevent such a thing from happening again.

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The so-called poll watch arm and parallel count arm are finally exposed to be inutile organizations. With all due respect to their volunteers, Namfrel and PPCRV are in truth powerless organizations. It is I think unfair to the volunteers that they had reported problems but their organizations did nothing. As in they did nothing at all, except perhaps reporting these problems to the public. But what had that accomplished? Aside from tainting Migs Zubiri’s impending victory, nothing. The system remains the same, and will probably operate again come next election.

The problem is that the system doesn’t give credence to whatever these organizations found. Namfrel did not count the votes from Maguindanao because its volunteers had not witnessed how these votes were counted. So the fact that one of the citizen arms failed to witness the counting doesn’t count to Comelec and to the Supreme Court. In short, the Comelec simply ignored Namfrel and PPCRV’s findings.

The watchdogs have failed to stop the dogs from doing dog-dastardly acts. They are watchdogs without teeth.

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Then there’s the issue of command votes. This is inherently against democracy. It also has no Islamic basis. I leave that to Islamic scholars to debate, but using shura to order the people to vote this way and that way violates the very basic definition of how we choose our leaders. At best, command vote is almost synonymous to show elections. You know, why have elections when you can compel the people to vote this way?

(I overheard someone saying that the Maguindanao vote should be disregarded since these people abdicated their right to vote because of the so-called command vote. Hmm….)

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And there’s the Comelec. No foul word can ever describe the present Comelec. Do I even have to list Comelec’s sins? From the Cayetano screwjob that failed to withholding the list of partylist nominees, this Comelec has done it all (if you know other despicable acts by the Comelec, list them in the comments section below). It has done everything with glee. Its sins are blatant, foul, unforgivable.

I love this line from Dean Jorge Bocobo: “In the hands of such as its (Comelec) present stewards, Democracy becomes a Whore“. And indeed it has.

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In the same post and in other posts, DJB argues for an automated election system. While I am not against it, I believe it is an incomplete solution. In any system, the weakest point is always the people within it. Automated systems are made to minimize the impact of human “errors”, but there is never a fool-proof system. I understand the impetus for automation, since it is hard to correct human character defects. In the long run, though, we will keep on designing systems, but all of these will be defeated by human “defects”.

After all, the current system has safeguards and security features (supposedly), but all of them were defeated by the election “operators”. So I think an automated system can also be defeated by determined operators who are motivated by greed (a character defect).

It is a cycle, I know. That is the real problem, and a solution is not in sight. Character change, combined with an automated system will probably help us solve this problem.

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To recap:
1. The Namfrel and PPCRV are inutile organizations, watchdogs without teeth.
2. Command vote is inimical to democracy, a violation of the basic tenets of suffrage.
3. The Comelec is one organization that needs to be changed from top to bottom.
4. Automation, plus character change, will improve the elections in this country.