After our angry united stand against corruption has been unequivocally demonstrated, we have to sober back to the business of ensuring that only honest and qualified candidates are elected into office. Having vented our emotions, we must now go into deliberate planning for a corruption-free political future.
Many have put much stock in voter education to solve the problem of dishonest, unqualified candidates buying their way into high office. Many see education as the way to get citizens to vote responsibly for honest and qualified candidates. This, I’m afraid, is a wrong assumption.
The cash-starved majority of voters sell their votes to the highest bidder, while a financially comfortable minority group helps candidates by contributing to their campaign fund in exchange for some future favors. In short, both groups vote on the basis of self-interest. Both groups, in effect, are to blame for the rampant vote-buying and, consequently, for the widespread corruption that has made many of us to recently mass in angry protest.
The rot is systemic. As long as the system is so rigged as to allow only the rich to run for office, voters are left to choose from among a set of vote-buying candidates all of whom will somehow recover their campaign expenses and more by robbing and thieving people’s money.
Two things need to happen. Most fundamental is an implementing law of the constitutional ban on political dynasties. This is foremost since the second, an overhaul of our election system, cannot happen as long as political dynasties are exclusively in control of government processes.
We are caught here in a vicious cycle. For voters not to sell their votes, they have to be financially independent. To be financially independent, however, they need to elect honest and qualified officials who will work to provide them with opportunities for quality living. Yet, to be able to elect such officials, the current election system has to be reformed. But how can the marginalized sector do it when they don’t have a voice (representatives) in government?
The way to break the cycle is for the true opposition to unite into a political party for the marginalized by initially agreeing on the basic common purpose of implementing the constitutional ban against political dynasties and reforming the electoral system. We have to forget our respective pet social analyses and political programs or we will never unite if we have to agree on everything.
That’s over the long term. In the short term, our collective anger must attain, first, the conviction and punishment of guilty officials and contractors and, second, the return of all the money they stole from the people’s coffers. Both are humongous tasks considering that people on top are using every trick of the trade to exonerate themselves.
But we have to somehow make this happen and peacefully. Otherwise, we might eventually have to go the violent way of the Indonesians, the Nepalese and the Bangladeshi. We can’t afford to let the chips fall where they may. Uniting around the common purpose of implementing the ban on political dynasties and the overhaul of our money-denominated election system is the way forward.