TODAY, at least 54.4 million registered voters will troop to various polling precincts all over the country to cast their votes. The positions at stake for national are: president, vice president, 12 members of the Senate, a district House congressional representative and a party-list. For local positions: governor, vice governor, members of the Provincial Board, city/town mayor and vice mayor and members of the council depending on the required numbers of representatives in each city or town. For Cebu City, which is a chartered city and has two districts, voters will only elect a mayor, vice mayor and eight
members for the City Council per district.
It is a Constitutional provision that elections should be held every second Monday of May every three years. And today’s political exercise is a presidential election. Section 4, Article 7 of the 1987 Constitution states: “Unless otherwise provided by law, the regular election for President and Vice President shall be held on the second Monday of May. In the next years, which they termed as mid-presidential election, we will only be electing the 12 members of the Senate and local positions.”
In the same provision it states: “The President shall not be eligible for any reelection. No person who has succeeded as President and has served as such for more than four years shall be qualified for election to the same office at any time.” Also, “no Vice President shall serve two successive terms.”
Today’s political exercise is very crucial because we will be electing a president who will run this country for the next six years. The role of the president cannot just be taken for granted. He will manage the country in all aspects from the economy, to job opportunities, peace and order, on how to combat criminality and illegal drugs, revenue-generation, projects implementation, delivery of basic services, environment, internal and external threats, foreign diplomatic and trade relations, products and manpower exports (I am referring to the overseas Filipino Workers) and everything. We need a president that has foresight, mission and vision on how to improve the economy of the country and how to combat poverty to alleviate the plight of the Filipino people.
There are five personalities who offered themselves to be president. Each one of them has their own traits, qualifications and field of expertise. So, before going to your respective polling precinct today, think it over who is the best among them that can effectively manage our county. Six years is too short of a good and performing president but too long for a bad and non-performing chief executive.
So, vote wisely. As GMA 7 network slogan said: “Dapat tama.” Kanang dili ta magbasol sa kaulahian nga atong gibutaran siya nga wala may mahimo. Labi pa ayaw ipamaligya ang inyong mga boto.
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The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has been reminding voters to be extra careful in handling their ballot because of the sensitivity of the paper and the vote counting machine (VCM). Any unnecessary markings, over voting and crumpled ballot will not be accepted by the machine. The Board of Election Inspector (BEI) will only allow a voter to vote again if the VCM will reject the ballot if it is not the fault of the voter like an invalid ballot, which means the ballot that was filled up by a voter does not belong to the precinct where he voted.
The VCM will reject ballots which are not intended for that particular precinct. The number of ballots is exactly the same number of voters in a clustered precinct. The ballots are specific to each polling place and also the VCM. If the ballot used by a voter belongs to another precinct, the VCM will definitely reject it regardless of how many times it is feed to the machine. To speed up the voting procedure, a rejected ballot can only be fed to the VCM four times. If it fails, then it is rejected.
So, far during the testing and sealing of the VCM, everything went on smoothly without any hitches. But there were VCMs that malfunctioned. The Comelec said there are only two reserve VCMs in every town. Now, what will happen if more than two units malfunction in today’s elections? Will the casting of votes in that precinct be canceled? We cannot tell of any eventualities. Remember we are dealing with machines. What if unexpected incidents happened during the transporting. Kadtong para sa mga isla ug mangabasa to sa dagat? And what about the credibility of that VCM during the actual counting? Is it really manipulation-free?
Can we really rely on results reflecting the real sentiment and pulse of the voting public? I hope so. Vote according to your conscience.
(bobby@sunstar.com.ph)