THE provincial sanggunian and the city councils of Angeles City and City of San Fernando should consider the merits of passing Resolutions on two issues of public interests.
The first concerns the people's desire to witness and know the immediate results of the elections, at least on the precinct level. From there the Comelec may use its vaunted, if controversial, automation system for faster transmission and canvassing of results.
In a purely automated election, barangay residents are deprived of their right to know who won in their respective villages. The scores and the summary of results in a specific precinct are not available or visible for public scrutiny. Transparency is what makes any election exciting, self-fulfilling and participatory.
In the manual (hybrid) system, the people would know the results immediately during and after the counting of votes in a cluster of precincts.
The results are tallied vote by vote on the blackboard or a large strip of paper for easy viewing by the expectant voters. Before midnight the results would show who is leading or winning, an event the barangay residents greatly anticipate.
At least in the precinct level, the polls should use the manual system for greater transparency. The automated system hides- and disable people to witness- actual results after the count.
It is not as fast as the automated counting where results from precincts are not visible for public viewing. The national campaign for Get Out and Vote becomes an empty and useless advocacy if barangay residents who participate in the polls would not see the immediate results.
The partly manual polls are democratic in the sense that more people will sacrifice time and effort to come out and vote, and to know and witness their votes had been accurately counted.
With countless electoral protests and controversies still unresolved, the people have a mistrust of the PCOS-based automated elections. As the maxim goes, the devil is in the details. How can the voters know the details, as manifested in the observable manual precinct counting, when the results are inside the machines?
The group who can manipulate the automated system will dictate the next presidential elections. We, in the barangays, can go hung and cry.
If our own provincial and city sanggunians can find time to deliberate on another matter of public interest, it is the urgent need to ask the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office to create more millionaires by spreading the jackpot money.
A winner of the P274 million jackpot prize of the Grand Lotto has been declared last Saturday.
We trust that an amount like this, especially in an election year, will not create ghost winners in future draws.
Our local governments should file a Resolution asking the PCSO board to cap the jackpot money to P100 million. P274 mllion is too much for one winner. The P100 million top prize is a fantastic blessing enough. The amount is too enormous and beyond the wildest dream of any lotto player.
The balance of P174 million, as in last week's draw, if drawn for special prizes of one million pesos each, can create l74 new millionaires in the communities. In an ordinary village setting, a small business enterprise can be started with P1 million.
It could be a sari-sari store, a small dining establishment, a water supply or gas outlet and such similar enterprises to produce jobs and increase family income.
The government after all is encouraging the citizens to be creative and productive members of the community. What is a better, practical, and doable way than spreading and splitting the lotto prize, outside its P100 million cap, thus creating instant millionaires once every few months? Unclaimed prizes amounting to millions may breed a disposal and utilization scheme using, heavens forbid, ghost (unidentified, unverifiable) winners.
Do not underestimate the chances of the Liberal Party's candidate for president. They have the huge machinery and unlimited resources to overtake the poll survey frontrunner(s).