Remember poll reforms?
SKETCHES By Ana Marie Pamintuan
The Philippine Star 10/19/2005
The country is not quite paralyzed. There are still key reforms that are doable, if lawmakers are up to the job.
They can begin where the accusations of cheating, lying and stealing started: the electoral system.
People in emerging democracies pin so much hope on elections that reforms in the system must be a priority. The power of the ballot is supposed to be the real people power — a representation of the choices and aspirations of the majority, not just of the few hundreds or thousands with the luxury of time to stage endless street marches.
After the results of the snap presidential election in 1986, and after the general mess in the elections last year, lawmakers should have moved to clean up the electoral system.
In the years after the first people power revolt, however, all we did was whine about the guns, goons and gold in every electoral exercise, and whine some more about the vote count that we like to believe must be the longest in the world. Did anyone change the system? No.
This time, with the scandal over vote-rigging in last year’s presidential race unresolved, lawmakers should be rushing to overhaul the electoral system. The next major elections, after all, are just two years away.
Is anything moving? Dream on.
* * *
Two groups led by former Senate president Jovito Salonga at least filed a plunder complaint on Sept. 15 last year against all the commissioners of the Commission on Elections as well as executives of Mega Pacific, the private consortium that won the contract to provide automated vote counting machines to the Comelec that would have been used in the 2004 polls. Mega Pacific delivered 1,991 ACMs to the Comelec and received P1.2 billion as payment.
Last January the Supreme Court nullified the contract, calling it fraudulent and directing the Office of the Ombudsman to determine the criminal liability of Comelec officials and Mega Pacific executives.
Salonga’s groups, Kilosbayan and Bantay Katarungan, argue that even if Comelec commissioners are impeachable officials, that does not grant them immunity from criminal prosecution before impeachment proceedings.
About two weeks ago there was talk that the Ombudsman was ready to suspend for six months all Comelec commissioners who were involved in the Mega Pacific deal, including Chairman Benjamin Abalos.
An official of the Office of the
Ombudsman denied it, arguing that they had no jurisdiction over impeachable officials. So why did the Ombudsman accept the complaint in the first place?
To this day the case hangs. I hope this has nothing to do with the peptic ulcers that have forced Ombudsman Simeon Marcelo to retire by the end of the month.
* * *
If the Office of the Ombudsman is claiming lack of jurisdiction, what is Congress doing? If Kilosbayan and Bantay Katarungan had waited for the impeachment of the Comelec commissioners before filing a plunder complaint, the case would never have been filed.
The opposition in the House of Representatives should have scrambled to file impeachment complaints against Comelec commissioners. With the Supreme Court ruling on the ACM case, the opposition can build a strong case. It won’t require authentication of a tape or the presence of missing former Comelec official Virgilio Garcillano.
The reluctance of congressmen raises suspicions that it’s not just executive officials who probably owe their elective positions to friends at the Comelec.
If the Office of the Ombudsman pushes through with the suspension, we could have another crisis in our hands. Many decisions made by the Comelec require the approval of all the commissioners. During a six-month suspension, with only one commissioner left, who will make the decisions? Will the opposition trust temporary appointees of President Arroyo? Will the temps require the nod of the Commission on Appointments?
* * *
If House members lack the testicular fortitude to confront Comelec officials, they should at least get to work on electoral reforms.
Will we see poll modernization in our lifetime? Two years after having my picture taken for my first modern voter’s ID, I’m still waiting for the card. All I’ve got is a slip of paper, now yellowing and frayed, with my name and precinct number. I have been presenting this "voter’s ID" to polling centers in elections over the past decade.
The Mega Pacific ACMs with special election software are rotting away — billion-peso white elephants (Kilosbayan says the Comelec actually paid Mega Pacific only P550 million through one bank). Are we going to buy new ones?
At the rate electoral reforms are moving, the voting system in Afghanistan might soon be better than ours. Even Iraq might do better, despite the mysterious padding of votes in favor of the new Iraqi constitution.
A report this week said the Comelec has started registering voters who are leaving for jobs overseas for purposes of absentee voting.
I don’t know how this will fare, since the 2003 registration of new voters and re-registration of old ones, ostensibly to clean up old voters’ lists, was a disaster. On Election Day last year, voting personnel were told to simply use the old lists.
If the Comelec cannot even clean up voters’ lists, how can it clean up the elections?
The Comelec is in such a sorry state that it is the biggest deterrent to proposals to hold snap elections to settle questions of legitimacy hounding the Arroyo administration.
* * *
We need a law on campaign finance, but lawmakers are understandably cool to legislating a cap on contributions to their war chests. They are also not keen on identifying their campaign donors, because a couple of names with links to illegal gambling or drugs might inadvertently turn up.
The Comelec in fact requires candidates to disclose the identities of campaign donors. Even those who win the presidency, however, flout this requirement. Rules on campaign spending are a joke.
Lawmakers can at least craft legislation that will enforce compliance with these rules. But many of them are among the most blatant violators of the rules.
If they refuse to kill their goose that lays the golden egg, there are other urgent electoral reform measures that they can pass.
And they can always go after the Comelec.
Remember poll reforms?
Originally Posted by JoRed
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