Farewell to democracy

The 2004 elections have produced enough strange and unsettling developments to haunt our people in the years to come.

They include nearly a million disfranchised voters, voters who could find their names on the list of voters, but which had the names of their dead relatives. Worse, we have an unrepentant Commission on Elections (Comelec) claiming that such events "had happened in the past" implying normal occurrence.

We also witnessed entire municipalities across the nation voting as solid blocs for President Arroyo and with zero for Fernando Poe, Jr. Instead of investigating these anomalies, Comelec commissioners have transformed themselves into sociological theorists postulating "parental influence" to account for their acceptance of these abnormalities.

That the Comelec failed miserably in carrying out its mandate to conduct honest and fair elections continues to anger our citizenry and erode the integrity of our leaders and democracy in the Philippines. The extent of popular revulsion at the Comelec commissioners parallels their anger against the martial law regime.

More disheartening than shocking is the realization that the current Congress, too, does not want to correct Comelec's failings when its majority rejected the simple request of the opposition to address the issue of dagdag-bawas (vote padding and shaving). The opposition wanted tampered or altered documents verified against other documents submitted to Congress before tallying them with uncorrupted certificates of canvass (COC). The request was considered important since rules formulated for canvassing in the past had not anticipated the problem of dagdag-bawas. Indeed, Sen. Aquilino Pimentel cited cases where COCs in several municipalities in Northern Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao were tampered. But each disclosure about alteration intended primarily to show the need to formulate new rules for verification of doubtful documents was dismissed as incidental or an act of sabotage by the opposition, presumable to prolong the period of canvass and therefore to stop the proclamation of GMA. Administration senators claimed that according to law, any form of cheating or tampering should have been challenged at the precinct level; failure to do so means forfeiture. In short, cheating was all right unless caught and challenged at the precinct level. Senator Pimentel claimed that the law cited was passed before the introduction of the practice dagdag-bawas.

Congress, Pimentel added, has the right to pass for itself the rules it believes most efficient for the canvassing of votes. It is also a solemn opportunity to show our people that the country conducted credible elections. Thus with some cause, Congress may claim that it is the nation's proven guardian class.

Except for opposition speakers, only rarely was there a hint that more was at stake than the charge of sabotage. The question of the true mandate of the people and the need to be transparent in order to convince our people that Congress indeed took pains to ascertain their true will never arose, not even the so-called democratic legislators in the administration. Clearly this is another example of the banality of evil in Philippine politics.

Some opposition leaders like Senator Pimentel and Congressmen Didagen Dilangalen of Maguindanao and Francis Escudero of Sorsogon did their best to focus public interest on principle. But to a majority more committed to proclaiming their candidate on June 30 by hope or by any other means at their command, the issue of finding the truth and protecting the true will of the people is secondary to proclamation. The majority in Congress overlooked the fact that respecting and protecting the vote of the citizen is the test of a nation's commitment to democracy. The vote of the citizen is his consent to be governed by the candidates he selected. Assume for a moment, for the sake of argument, that the majority acquiesced to such a request and that the search for truth is not so much a means as an end to delay the canvassing of the votes. Still their position would become untenable if after investigating seven or eight COCs purported cases of massive cheating proved to be baseless. By then the administration senators would have the moral authority to reject the opposition's requests for further verification.

As for media, especially the major TV networks and broadsheets, they have since day one campaigned for GMA and are impatient for her proclamation. Like the military, they have arrogated unto themselves the role of a kingmakers and are not therefore ready to address the issue of promoting the will of the people by ensuring honest and untampered returns.

The fact is that the goal of the majority in Congress is not to find out the truth or to correct past malpractices or institute reform measures but to proclaim GMA at all cost.

Few things are more ominous than the audacity with which the claim of ensuring the deadline as cover for resisting any charges of fraud or cheating from being examined or verified, except the casualness with which the majority refused to lock into fraudulent cases. This refusal can only lead our people to conclude that the majority in Congress can suborn or deflect the will of the people, and a subversion of the democratic process will have been affected by deception, subterfuge, lassitude and congressional obstruction.

This is the larger issue, overshadowing all the claims about meeting the deadline and anticipated crisis about prolonged canvassing. The fact that Congress is mandated to act as the National Board of Canvass for president and vice-president is not only for it to meet the stipulated deadline but more importantly to ascertain that the will of the people is ensured. Certainly it is a responsibility that scarcely authorizes the majority in Congress to allow people who worked to reverse electoral verdicts to get away.

Unfortunately since the martial law regime, our leaders who control the majority in Congress have regarded themselves as the law or have assumed that the law is what they choose to make of it. This was the assumption of the Estrada supporters in the Senate when they refused to open the second envelope during the impeachment trial that led to the EDSA II. It is the assumption of the leaders that when they have the majority they cannot be regulated or restrained by rules.

It is no less alarming that a large segment of the Congress acquiesced to a joint Senate-House committee to undertake the canvassing of votes instead of the two chambers in plenary session as mandated by the Constitution. Is this not a perversion of democracy and of representative government?

Perhaps our leaders in Congress need be reminded that in our system, government is made by and belongs to the people. The electorate not only have a right to know what happen to their votes but what steps their representatives in Congress have taken to correct the perversion of their will through tampered certificates of canvass at the municipal or provincial level. To deny people knowledge of what their representatives do, especially pertaining to the fate of their votes, is to deny them the knowledge of the truth and to prevent them from passing judgment on the conduct of their representatives, and thus make a mockery of the democratic process. If we are to be a truly functioning democracy, these representatives should have respected this elementary principle. To withhold or conceal information from their constituents is violation of trust between the governor and the governed. What is sad and dangerous is that the members of the majority in Congress has chosen to turn their back on the very people that voted them into office and used their cumulated powers as means to pursue their personal agenda, self-interest and accumulation of personal wealth.

Considerations of rules to rectify a flawed electoral process are far from irrelevant to a discussion of procedures on what to do with tampered documents and their perpetrators. Unless they devise legal solutions to rectify cheating in the electoral process, they may push the voters to pursue extra legal means to seek redress of their grievances.

No doubt there are historical lessons of other abusive and entrenched elites, well known to our electorate. But if protesting, reforming or even purging has legitimacy in the streets, the critical challenge is that if Congress can resolve the issue of credible canvass with finality within its halls, it could restore the people's faith in its efficacy and make the political and governmental system come alive again. Failure to do so will go far beyond simplistic rumor of an EDSA IV or destabilization plots. It simply means the end of democracy.

Back to Elections postmortems | Democracy Files