Saturday, April 21, 2007 Nalzaro: Why would politicians buy votes, kill? By Bobby Nalzaro Saksi
WHAT'S in politics that some politicians will go to the extent of employing such dirty tricks as spending huge amounts of money to buy votes and bribe election officers and even killing political opponents just to get elected into office?
Is the motivation of these politicians public service or is it greed for power?
Note, for example, that the Philippine National Police has already recorded several election-related incidents since the start of the campaign period. Most of these incidents, though, happened in some provinces in Luzon and Mindanao.
In Cebu province, we are lucky that our politicians are professional enough and have not adopted the old ways of political warlordism by employing the three Gs (gold, guns and goons). Our politicians are only trading accusations through the media apparently to get free publicity.
Of course, there have been reports of political violence breaking out in some areas, like the shooting incidents reported in some towns in Bantayan island.
The police, though, have considered these as minor political matters and added that placing these areas under the control of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) is still not warranted.
But the police should not let down its guard considering that the said island has a history of violence breaking out during elections.
Just this week, candidates for mayor in the three municipalities of Bantayan island signed a peace covenant in front of police and Comelec officials. They promised to make the elections in their areas peaceful. A few days after the covenant signing, however, shooting incidents involving some of their political supporters were reported.
I agree with the statement of one of the candidates for mayor there that the activity was merely for publicity and that the contents of the covenant they signed were not meant to be actually observed and followed by the concerned parties.
Meanwhile, a wave of political killings occurred in other parts of the country.
Even media people who were critical of some politicians were not spared.
In Nueva Ecija, for example, a radio reporter who exposed an alleged anomaly committed by a congressman was felled by an assassin's bullet. In Lucena City, two journalists, one of them a correspondent of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, were ambushed. Luckily, they survived. Police said the motive of the attack could be political.
But why would some politicians resort to violence? Isn't it enough that they buy votes?
I am not closing the possibility of my joining politics in the future, but until now I am still wondering why politicians would spend millions of pesos just to win an elective post when the salary that they will be receiving in return won’t even be enough to defray the expenses they incurred in the elections.
How much does a congressman, a governor or a mayor get? And they would kill an opponent just to get that?
Maybe I can answer those questions once I finally run in an election.
