Thursday, May 24, 2007 Ledesma: Pinoys can do better than good By Jun Ledesma Sunbursts
A 12-0 result for Team Unity in Mindanao is cheating, while 12-0 for the Genuine Opposition in Makati is "negative votes" against President Arroyo. A 16-year-old girl voting in Maguindanao is irregularity, ballot box murder and arson in Luzon is "politically motivated."
Of course, there is cheating everywhere. It is a national malady brought about by devious political motives and greed. No region in this country is shielded against electoral machination. Given the opportunity to cheat, all candidates of whatever color will cheat, thwart, extrapolate and twist the balloting. The Jurassic system that we have opens the electoral conduct to all forms of creative fraud mostly copied from Louisiana but improved by the ingenuity of Pinoys.
Cheating is so pervasive that every losing candidate had a mindset that they lose because they were out-cheated. It's no longer a surprise to see a deluge of protests filed before the Commission on Elections. It is even a wonder now why despite the notorious inutility of the Comelec the losers still trust the agency to rule in their favor.
Or, maybe they knew too well that given the reputation, or total lack of it, of the Comelec, they can swing the decision in their favor. The cheat virus is so malignant that it infects the poll body and the candidates. I puke each time a politician goes on TV and rebuke his or her adversaries for committing fraud.
If you ask me, the candidates of whatever parties and political persuasions deserve each other as adversaries. To outwit, outcheat, outmaneuver and outspend each other. The thing is, for as long as we have an electoral system that is open to all kinds of scam, we have to live by these iniquities.
Don't get me wrong. Filipinos have the innate capacity for reform. When Marcos declared martial law, life was good but only for the first two years. After realizing the enormity of power Marcos and his ilk went on a rampage. Filipinos were on the edge and they fought back the rumbling tanks and the muzzles of the guns. They fought back, not even wielding a stick or kitchen knife but with roses and their bare bodies. Yet the Pinoys won.
We thought there will be reforms. Life was good only for a year for after that a new era of reprisal and rape of liberty in the name of democracy set in. The new centurions took over. "Kami naman" was the maniacal battle cry.
Because it cannot do better than what the dictatorship can do, they stripped the landscape of the "evil" Marcos legacies. The Bataan nuclear plant was mothballed, standby generators that would supplement power to feed Metro Manila were left to rust and cannibalized, duly elected local officials were forcibly replaced, "land for the actual tillers" a landmark edict for land reform was supplanted by "land for the landless" under CARP, suspected crony establishments were sequestered. Etcetera Etcetera.
But what happened after people power? The new rulers were so inept and so corrupt they devoured and ravaged whatever is left of the carcass of the Marcos era. "Kami naman....." And so they came. Let's not go far. In Davao City Elias Lopez who was elected by a resounding majority, was replaced by Zaf Respicio. His short term was reeking with corruption that he lost to Rodrigo Duterte by a wide margin despite his reputation as the fair-haired boy of Cory. Danding Cojuangcos booming investments in Davao del Sur were taken over by PCGG and in less than a year the boom busts and thousands went out of job. The sequestration forces on the other hand were flying high.
See their lifestyle now. Coconut, banana and sugar plantations were placed under CARP. This looks messianic except that Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac, which is owned by the President’s family was inventively exempted. If rice and corn productivity plummeted when CARP was implemented, blame it to “land for the landless” foolishness of the administration. Imagine giving lands to those who refuse to till! I don’t know how many squatters in the city had been awarded but left their lands idle.
Worse, I do not know how many of them sold their lands, not knowing what to do and even how to plant kamote, and after squandering the proceeds retire just the same in the ghettos of the cities. Rewind a bit and recall the six-hour brownouts in Metro Manila because the power generators have conked out. They hate to admit the Bataan nuclear plant could have solved the problem. (These days, we hear talk that even with its disuse that nuclear plant has safety features far superior than what other advance countries around us are using.)
Pardon me for straying into the sins of commissions and omissions of the past regimes. I am trying to demonstrate the inherent goodness of Pinoys which too, can be abused and perverted by a few politicians who have selfish and insidious agenda of their own.
But the light at the end of the tunnel has not actually been extinguished. There are some bright lights and flickering hopes here and there. One day, there will be a new force that can get these sparkling lights together to bring a sustained brilliance of honest politics and politicians to prove to the world that Filipinos can do better than just good.
