Thursday, November 01, 2007 Seares: How about ‘generally honest?’ By Pachico A. Seares News Sense
RATING an election as "generally peaceful" is easy and safe.
No need for a lot of data before mouthing the assessment. There may be incidents of violence somewhere but they can't change the general picture.
A general rating focuses only on "what is occurring extensively, common, widespread, the main and over-all features, no specifics or details."
How can one go wrong with "generally peaceful"?
Police chiefs said the same thing, "generally peaceful," less than an hour after barangay and SK voting centers closed last Monday.
It's difficult to dispute that description. No specific standards, and the larger the area covered the tougher to challenge it.
A "generally peaceful" tag may be risky on a sitio or barangay, where incidents are quickly known. But as the area widens---from neighborhood to city, province, region, or nation---the police can make the call with less fear of being contradicted.
Besides, how many violent incidents, lives lost, or limbs torn are needed before "generally peaceful" becomes "violence-ridden"? Do they have a set of measures?
None that you or I know. That's why police are so confident of making the call even if their monitors are still out.
No corpus
It's not the same thing with judging the election's honesty. Did you hear police officials say "generally honest"?
Honesty of an election is harder to judge. Cheating is illicit or on the sly. No "corpus" of the crime.
Yes, there are cries of fraud but they allege without proof, which amounts to the annoying noise of losers.
A generally peaceful election is not necessarily a generally honest one.
