"Ours is a system that operates on distrust."
"Ours is a system that operates on distrust."
As of Saturday, barely 20 percent of registered voters across Taiwan have cast their vote.
Since Sunday is their day-off from the factories where most of our OFWs here work, we expect many to troop to our Neihu, Taichung and Kaohsiung offices today to cast their ballots. Still, we’d probably just hit a quarter of the number of registered voters. Of course, some of the registered voters may have left Taiwan by now, either for home or elsewhere. But still, voter enthusiasm does not seem to be high with mid-term elections.
From April 13 to the first week of May, voters came in trickles, and being a value-for-money kind of person, I ask why Comelec has to require overseas posts to assign several employees to man the polling precincts and take them off their daily responsibilities. Not that I question the right of overseas Filipinos to vote, but surely there is a better way.
Allowing a whole month for voting seems too much, when Indonesians who also recently cast their votes for the presidency no less had just a day to do so. Americans and Europeans mail in their votes. In places like Taiwan where the postal system is efficient, could we consider voting by mail as an alternative? Surely there are many more countries in the world where the postal system can be trusted.
Then again, ours is a system that operates on distrust.
Take the airport, where there is an army of security guards and other workers who check on everything for every possible reason. To enter the airport, a security guard has to ask where you are bound for, and asks to see your ticket. (But if you are a foreign-looking guy, or smartly dressed, you get past them without being disturbed). See how they distrust fellow Filipinos but not foreigners, especially the white-skinned ones.
Then you load your luggage in an X-ray device and pass through a metal scanner. You’d have to take off your cellphones and other metal objects and place them in plastic trays to be scanned. Only then can you go to the airline counter to check in, after which you are once again asked by another security guard before entering the immigration area to show your boarding pass and ticket. Another level of distrust.
You queue up for an eternity to get to the immigration officer where OFW’s have to show a whole envelope of documents to be allowed to leave his country and join the Filipino diaspora.
Having had his passport stamped, one goes through yet another X-ray and metal scanner, this time with watch and belt and shoes off, apart from every other metal object in one’s body. You pass by the duty-free shops which sell almost every outmoded foreign brand but have little by way of Philippine goods other than dried mangoes and rhum, into another security guard asking you for the umpteenth time, to show your passport, your ticket and boarding pass to get into your departure gate. Wala talagang tiwala sa kapwa.
So too in the matter of overseas voting. I cannot for the life of me understand why Comelec has to come up with such labyrinthine procedures for overseas Filipinos to have to go through to cast their vote for 12 senators and a party-list party (even the redundancy sucks!)
So, we have low voter turnouts. I would expect only 25 percent, probably a little over that, to cast their ballots for these mid-term elections, despite efforts extended by our staff first to increase the number of registrants, and later, through every social media platform, to get our OFWs to vote.
Government spends billions for this right of suffrage, the so-called cornerstone of our democratic rights, and for what?
Anyway, it’s finally over after today. And judging by the surveys, our people will include another set of misfits and elevate them to level of the “august.”
Which is why I have never voted a straight 12 or before that, 24 names for the Senate.
Why the hell should my fill-up rate include those who I honestly do not consider worthy?
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Who will make it to the Senate, JV or Jinggoy? The surveys show it’s very tight for the last three to four slots among twelve, and for both Ejercito-Estradas, it’s a cliffhanger till the end.
Surveys show it’s Abby instead of Jun-jun for the Makati mayoralty post which their family has monopolized for the last 33 years, but not after a very recriminatory campaign which showed a family dynasty sundered almost beyond repair.
In Cebu City, the fight between incumbent Tomas Osmeña and challenger Edgar Labella, the city vice-mayor whom President Duterte supports, has been very close. If Tomas, who has been mayor of Cebu for decades and controlled it’s politics virtually since the end of martial law, loses to upstart Labella who is bereft of political pedigree, it could signal the end of a dynasty which began at the turn of the last century.
My friend Serge Osmeña, who deserves to be senator over and over again, with a performance record unmatched by many of his peers, does not seem able to make it this time, according to the latest surveys. If only he had told the president he wanted to run in May of 2018, Serge would have been a shoo-in for the administration ticket.
* * *
We end this column with condolences to three friends who died last week: Dongkoy Emano of Cagayan de Oro and Misamis Oriental, a gutsy firebrand with a truly pro-poor heart.
Likewise Boy Nograles, whose father, an Ilonggo migrant to the land of promise, as was his mother’s family of Batanguenos, settled and prospered in Davao City. Speaker Boy used to be with the Danding Cojuangco-ran UCPB, but he joined us in the UNIDO after Ninoy Aquino’s assassination at the tarmac.
And Karina Constantino David, activist until the end and nationalist like her father. There were times when we were together in support of causes and personalities, and times when we were on opposite sides. But I have always admired her guts, and respected her fidelity to country and cause.
To the bereaved families of these three friends, my profound sympathies.
