The Importance of the May 2007 Elections
The coming elections will be a test of our vision for democracy
By Christian S. Monsod
Following are excerpts from a speech delivered by Christian Monsod, One Voice chairman and former Commission on Elections chairman, at the joint general membership meeting of the Makati Business Club and other business associations on 8 March 2007
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| One Voice chairman Chris Monsod believes there is hope that the 2007 elections will be credible if all Filipinos play a part in its making |
Most businessmen appear to be happy with the developments in the economy, but you are clearly concerned about the credibility of the 2007 elections. You are here because your concern goes beyond the successful delivery of credible elections. You care enough to know that we must also address the broader crisis of the people’s trust in the political system, and in democracy itself, as a means to a better life. The repeated attempts to test the constitutional limits of executive powers, the attempt to change the Constitution for political gain, and the politics-as-usual environment of the election campaign, must concern you. All of us know the far-reaching consequences of a growing alienation and disengagement of people from democratic processes, especially the youth and the poor.
If democracy has not changed the social, economic, and political landscape of the country, it should occur to us that maybe the problem is not that democracy is not suitable for developing countries, but that we have not nurtured it or are not practicing it—neither the administration nor the opposition, but more importantly, not by civil society itself.
It is the privilege of age to recall images that make sense of his surroundings. Mine is the image of businessmen and the most ordinary citizens guarding ballot boxes together, with utter disregard for their safety, with no thought of reward or benefit, protecting the ballot as if it was the most sacred blessing of their lives. Whether locking arms together or raising fists defiantly in the air, or singing the impassioned cry of the imprisoned, there was an army that was invincible for the whole world to see.
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| In the past, Filipinos have witnessed ordinary citizens protecting the ballot as if it was the most sacred blessing of their lives |
But the fact is that after we brought our nation to glory in EDSA and accomplished the first peaceful transfer of power in 27 years in 1992, we folded up our banners, we put away the t-shirts with the imaginative slogans that brought humor to the seriousness of the time, and we went back to wearing our business suits and monitoring the stock prices of our companies or focusing on our narrow sectoral advocacies. And as we went our separate ways with our separate causes, we lost something of the dream of a nation and the significance of our interconnected lives.
Perhaps it is time to go back to our beginnings for the 2007 elections.
Every election is critical for its own reasons. If the 1986 elections, as once noted by a writer, were a test of our courage, and the 1992 and subsequent elections were tests of our maturity, then the 2007 elections are surely a test of our vision for democracy.
That vision cannot include the weakening of democratic institutions that would justify what is sometimes euphemistically called “a strong republic” to fill the void, in which the ubiquitous presence and increasing power of the military and police in government affairs is a troubling trend. The military gambit is not new to our politics, but we thought we had addressed it permanently by the overwhelming aversion of our people to any kind of military dominance in our national life. Surely, the business community remembers how the Marcos regime, propped up by the military, set back our economy by 10 years, a gap we still have not closed after 20 years.
If we are agreed that a functioning democracy is a part of our future and that a credible election is its fundamental building block, the obvious question is: Is there hope that the 2007 elections will be credible?
My answer is YES, if we all play our part in its making. There are only three principles to observe: (1) one-man, one-vote; (2) allow people to freely exercise their right to vote; and (3) count correctly what’s in the ballot.
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| The efficient and effective handling of the minutest details can make or unmake elections |
We had thought that, by this time, we would be closer to the norm of democratic elections. But somewhere along the way, this was derailed. Automation is nine years behind the original schedule, and full automation will not happen until 2013 at the earliest. The latest automation law is seriously flawed and was enacted too late to even enable pilot testing in 2007.
What of the COMELEC? It is disappointing that the President has chosen not to fill the last vacancy. But we should at least be grateful that she did not fill it with somebody like Mr. Garcillano, and that the three latest appointees are persons of competence with a record of integrity who are well aware of the need to restore the credibility of the commission and are unlikely to allow themselves to be part of any cheating. So far, the COMELEC has generally been even-handed in the enforcement of the rules, but continued vigilance is obviously called for. Monitoring the resolutions and moves of the commission is the specific mission of one of the NGOs, the Consortium for Electoral Reforms.
The pity of it is that, by and large, even when it is not on its best behavior, our democracy works—even in 2004, to the credit of the field officers of the COMELEC, if we judge the process and the results by the totality of some 17,000 positions at stake in the elections. Of course, the question of cheating in the presidential elections casts a long shadow on the entire elections. That the President really won, I believe, the elections, albeit by a much smaller margin, is not enough to mute the clamor and the campaign to finally settle the issue of legitimacy by treating the coming mid-term elections as an indirect referendum. There are those among you who would say we are past that and must move on. Maybe so. But the high distrust level of the government cannot be ignored, with perceptions that, to stay in power, the government is disposed to misuse government resources (pork barrel allocations, the passing of campaign vouchers to government-owned and -controlled corporations, “intelligence” funds), or commit wholesale fraud in canvassing, or use the military and police for partisan politics. Hence, the criticality of citizens’ groups protecting the ballot and validating the process and the results of the elections.
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| Over 500,000 volunteers need to be mobilized for election monitoring activities |
There is one important assumption in mobilizing this effort—that the church-based groups will do within the church community what they ask of the nation: unite for a more lofty purpose. That NASSA of the CBCP (which comprise the core of volunteers especially in the provinces), PPCRV, and Namfrel will adopt a unified approach, with the least overlap and at the least cost, to address the two biggest constraints to this kind of effort: first, enough volunteers to do the job, and second, resource mobilization. The numbers are formidable. Forty-four million voters, over 250,000 precincts, and 1,600 canvassing points, which imply mobilizing over 500,000 volunteers, including some 3,500 lawyers to monitor the canvassing, and raising total resources of up to P50 million in cash and in kind, partly by local chapters.
The good news is that, regardless of the competition for accreditation, all the groups have agreed to take substantive steps towards a unified effort.
I mention these initiatives to assure you that cooperation is happening and that many people are already at work in this huge national effort. But they urgently need volunteers and funding for each of the activities, the most important of which are poll watching, the parallel count, and the canvassing watch. Free and fair elections, after all, is the cumulative effect of many safeguards, and it is the efficient and effective handling of the minutest details that can make or unmake elections.
It is said that the mind is the athlete; the body is merely the means for us to jump higher, run faster, or lengthen our reach beyond our grasp. After each of us has thought deeply about the stakes in this coming elections, after we have thought together on how to address them, let us “dare our courage to follow our thoughts.” We don’t have much time. The day of reckoning is barely two months away.
If democracy, according to Vaclav Havel, is the unfinished story of human aspirations, let us continue the journey in the coming elections by helping restore the trustworthiness of the election process, and on the strength of that foundation, move on to other institutions. Each of us must put down his piece in this giant jigsaw puzzle called nation building, for only then can we say that we are truly deserving of this blessed nation. |
