Saturday, February 03, 2007 Carvajal: The election summit is for show By Orlando P. Carvajal Break Point
I HAVE to go with the bishops when they refused PGMA’s call for a pre-election summit. This proposed summit is obviously for show, meant only to respond to the international community’s pressure on her government for credible election results. She actually ignores pressure from domestic critics whom she simply scorns and more interested in allaying the fears of the international community whom she respects more than her people.
The President has lost all credibility and having the bishops in the summit would lend her some, plenty even. Sure, she has assured us that her government is ready to take all measures to ensure honest and peaceful elections. But who believes her when all she has done about the allegations of cheating is to deny it and block all efforts to investigate and get to the bottom of the issue? Who believes her when she completely ignored the Davide commission’s recommendations for substantive reforms of the electoral system?
Moreover, if the opposition agrees with her in a summit to undertake measures for clean and honest elections, who will believe them? A lie plus a lie will just equal a bigger lie. The bishops must be there to provide a credible front for hollow assurances.
But as expected the opposition did not heed her call for a summit because, we can safely presume, it has devious plans of its own. And fortunately for us, the bishops did not fall into the trap.
If she was really sincere in guaranteeing a free, honest and peaceful election, she should have acted already on at least one basic recommendation of the Davide commission, namely, a total revamp of the Comelec. And if the opposition wanted sincerely a clean and honest election, all it had to do was to fight vigorously for electoral reform, starting with the revamp of the Comelec.
Nothing, of course, happened with the Davide recommendations. Nothing will happen with the Melo commission’s recommendations either since she has already exonerated the military even before the commission could come out with its full report. It is obvious now that both commissions were purely for show and we have reasons to believe the call for a pre-election summit falls in the same category.
This is where we come in. We cannot rely on the assurances of our present crop of politicians but must nevertheless assure ourselves of a clean and peaceful May election. Hence, in the absence of a genuine third force that we can support, we must join the bishops and any or all other initiatives to prevent cheating and violence this coming May. We have to put our future into our own hands. Only we the people, not PGMA or the opposition or any summit, can guarantee a clean and peaceful election.
