“Lesser elected officials will mean better governance at less expense to the taxpayers”
UNLESS Rep. Rodante Marcoleta and Caloocan’s Rep. Egay Erice can prove their case against a certain “Comelec official,” there is no point writing in this space about the offshore and local accounts containing almost a billion pesos.
But listening to Erice’s misgivings (on a DZRH tele-radyo interview by Anthony Taberna last July 10) about the Miru voting machines raises genuine fears about a possible failure of next year’s mid-term elections.
Firstly, is Miru leasing a prototype of an automated system to us, which has not been used in any country before?
This is against the law which specifically provides that our voting systems must have been used in another country before.
Secondly, the “prototype” has what looks like a small monitor from which the voter could check the accuracy of his vote, instead of a print-out of our choices which we hand to the teachers for Comelec to base its revalidation in case of protest.
Given the long list of officials, namely 12 senators, one congressman, one governor and his vice, one mayor and his vice, plus provincial board members and municipal councilors, on top of which we have that 1987 Constitutional concoction called the party-list which has been bastardized through a SC decision penned by former Justice Antonio Carpio, how does the voter adequately check his vote from such a small monitor?
Has the Comelec done proper time and motion studies on how long this new system will take, given some one thousand voters per precinct?
Imagine an actual scenario where Candidate A, knowing that Candidate B is popular in a precinct, asks his loyalists to be first in line, who then delay the voting by taking their sweet time reviewing the results in the monitor, challenging the veracity of the results on the screen, thus creating heavy traffic that deprives Candidate B’s supporters from casting their ballot?
You will have mayhem, especially in hotly contested areas, leading even to violence, leading to a failure of elections.
The chairperson of the Senate Committee on Electoral Reforms had better call for a live televised demonstration where time and motion can be calculated, including the rife potentials for candidate-induced delays.
Pundits are now so ga-ga over the latest Pulse Asia survey and the fake Duter-tres challenge that we may be overlooking the voting system which will be used first and only in da Pilipins.
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Which brings me to a favorite advocacy: why don’t we revise the 1987 Constitution and, among others, come up with less elected officials?
First, if we elect senators by administrative region, at two per region, we will have to write only 2 names.
Second, if we vote for a presidential team, as in the US, that is only 1 vote.
Third, applying the same to the provincial slate, count another 1 vote. And for the municipal officials, another 1 tandem vote. In the case of a chartered city, we only vote for 1 tandem.
Four, we vote for the district congressman, 1 vote again.
Fifth, abolish the bastardized party list system where billionaire contractors rule over the “marginalized” roost.
Sixth, lengthen the term of office to either five or six years for all elected officials, with the barangay officials elected in mid-terms.
To sum up, we elect 1 presidential tandem, 2 senators, 1 district congressman, 1 gubernatorial tandem and 1 municipal tandem, a total of six, even five in the case of chartered and highly urbanized cities.
The municipal mayors will comprise the legislature.
In the province of Nueva Vizcaya, that will be 15 mayors acting like a board of directors in a corporate setting. Makes sense, right?
In a city like Makati, the 24 barangay chairmen constitute the legislature, which after all meet only twice a week in most cases.
Who else would know the needs of their constituency better than the barangay chairs and the municipal mayors?
Where there are so many barangays, as in the City of Manila with 897, we consolidate these into larger constituencies.
My barangay in Malate has some 400 registered voters, while a barangay in QC could have 10,000 or more. Rationalize these proportionate to population density and land area.
Where there are far too many municipal mayors (like Cebu or Bohol), they can take turns sitting in the provincial legislature at two or three years each.
Lesser elected officials will mean better governance at less expense to the taxpayers.
We don’t even have to automate our elections.
But this requires a re-writing of a new Constitution which will perhaps not happen in my lifetime.
