Carvajal: There ought to be laws

Break Point
Carvajal: There ought to be laws
SunStar Carvajal
Published on

Philippine elections have become a circus with a compliment of sad-faced clowns only. Our elections are no longer a serious search for morally upright, selfless, and competent leaders. There ought to be laws to radically reform our elections and stop them from being the not-at-all-funny-but-morbid joke they are today.

To be sure, none of the present crop of politicians will initiate badly needed electoral reforms for the obvious reason they have exclusive access to political power under the present set-up. Here are some suggestions, anyway, for whatever they are worth.

First, there should be a law banning independent candidates. A candidate must represent the social philosophy and governance style of a group or party. Candidates riding on their individual whims and caprices have no place in representative democracy.

To facilitate this, there must be a law requiring government certification of political parties as public institutions. This law should empower government to provide all certified political parties equal budget allocations for their operation. This gives the marginalized sector a fair chance at operating a party that would carry their voice.

Top priority requirement for certification should be a social philosophy and governance style that would distinguish them according to their positions (center, moderate left and right of center, extreme left or right of center) in the political spectrum.

A minimum number of card-carrying party members should also be required for certification. Only registered members shall vote in conventions that parties will be required by law to hold to select their nominees for the elective positions.

Parties must also have a written code of discipline, the core of which would be a ban on arbitrary switching of parties. The code will form part of a required syllabus of the education program a party must administer to members so these will understand the socio-economic orientation of their party.

Finally, there should be a law requiring a majority and not a plurality win. Run-off elections should be held until a party gets the majority of votes cast. Democracy is rule of the majority, is it not?

Additionally, there should be a law disallowing politicians from running for a position lower than their previous one. This violates the virtue of statesmanship.

With these laws in place, we now have a genuine party list system where only parties (with their list of nominees) are voted for. Since only the names of two or three parties are in the ballot, counting can be done manually and in public, thus avoiding the secret and questionable computerized counting of votes of hundreds of candidates.

I have no illusions though. I do not see anybody working for the likes of these reforms soon. Not extreme rightists as these reforms will loosen their grasp on power. Not extreme leftists who want power exclusively for themselves through armed revolution. Centrists, the moderate left and right can do this… if they could only get united.

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