The last official task of the 16th Congress is convening the National Board of Canvassers. It has just participated in one of the fastest and most efficient canvassing sessions in Philippine election history, which led to the proclamation of our new president and vice president.
While we applaud all those concerned with the speedy conduct of counting the votes, rumors of election fraud still persist both in the political and media circles, as well as in social media. And these rumors are not without basis: At the start of the campaign season, we received information that a massive financial campaign war chest was prepared by a particular camp.
We will have to find out whether the money from that massive war chest went into vote buying, whether it was meant to pay off election officials or voters themselves. Not only are these activities patently illegal, but we fear that such financial backing won’t be reflected in the audit of election spending of particular candidates, exposing fundamental weaknesses in the implementation of our election laws.
We will have to find out whether that war chest was sourced from public coffers, considering the pre-election buzz of the mad scramble for government agencies to generate revenue allegedly to fill up this war chest. It is one thing that the money would be used for electoral fraud and corruption. It is another, more perverted, matter if the money came from the taxpayers.
We will have to find out who the people behind it are and how they ran this system of illicit financial generation and distribution to subvert the electoral system. An operation this big and ambitious has to have a system. Worse, this system was set up to either run through legal loopholes or completely run over the laws of the land.
While we accept the results of the national canvassing, we will have to disabuse ourselves of any doubts with regard to the past three automated elections where allegations such as this kept surfacing. Though experience and common sense dictate that only one camp has the capability to raise such funds, it is the mandate of the 17th Congress to ensure that the election laws and anti-corruption laws are being implemented in full force. The 17th Congress should also be agile enough to cope with how corrupt elements continuously innovate election year after election year. If we want to be one step ahead of the bad guys, we have to have an idea which direction they could go.
I therefore propose that electoral reform should be one of the most important and pressing concern for the 17th Congress, especially if we want to hone it and improve it pending the change in our present form of government into president-elect Rodrigo Duterte’s vision of a Federal Philippines. I will file a resolution immediately at the start of the 17th Congress so that this issue will be taken up at the plenary and in public hearings to expose election offenses and seek out its culprits.