THE votes cast for the mid-term local elections, held Monday nationwide, are nearly completely counted, with the official tally expected to be announced within the week by the Commission on Elections.
More than 68 million qualified voters were expected to have cast their votes, who include at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas electors who earlier signed up for the new online system which opened last month.
The voters, in blistering 34 degrees Celsius average across the country, chose aspirants to more than 18,000 posts, from seats in the Senate and Congress down to hotly contested provincial and town offices, with scores waving their party-list banners.
The voters included 31,000 prisoners at the state penitentiary, many of them still awaiting court trial on various criminal charges including murder.
While note people are nudged by the thought they will be looking for good governance and accountability from the newly elected or re-elected officials who will begin their three-year term – six years for some of 12 senators chosen – on June 30.
Good governance and accountability have been elusive in many elected officials after the votes had been counted in years past.
Such marks have not been helped any by election irregularities and violence as in this year’s electoral exercise where at least two were killed in Silay City in Negros Occidental.
Good governance has reflected a broken mirror in some areas on how society is being governed, with political dynasties lording it over despite a Constitutional prohibition although politicians have run around this by saying there is no enabling law.
Thus, good governance, which lacks a system and mechanisms by which it, and the people, are held to account, has been compromised since there is no transparent decision-making system that meets the needs of Juan and Juana de la Cruz.
Public accountability has also been imperiled since public officials, who sounded and appeared sympathetic to the electorate and their toddlers, including the elderly in the expanded clan, had been off being answerable for their performance and thus held responsible for any failures or misconduct.
The Monday exercise has also been seen as a plebiscite, nay a ballot, on the combustible fight between President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. and impeached Vice President Sara Duterte, whose father, former President Rodrigo Duterte is now in The Hague facing charges of crimes against humanity.
But the 80-year-old former president is running for mayor in his hometown of Davao where keen observers say is a sure winner.