LuisTeodoro.com

The more things change—the more they become worse.

Those who insist that the May 10 elections were different from past Philippine exercises are wrong. That latest episode in the Philippine saga of futility did have certain unique characteristics, no things being ever exactly alike. But they were the same in substance, and the worst we’ve ever witnessed since 1969.

Philippine elections have always been the monopoly of the Philippine elite, whose political parties are basically committed to the same policies of governance. Those “parties” have differed from each other only in name, and in the personalities that dominated them. »

Those who expected a return to “normalcy” could be in for a surprise in the aftermath of this political season.

“Normalcy” is defined by the cynical as the country’s settling back in the next six years to more of the same corruption, misgovernment and the country’s continuing slide into poverty.

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Not only Fernando Poe Jr. is shooting himself in the foot by prematurely announcing his victory and generally confirming his inadequacies. The Arroyo government is, too. In the brief span of four days, it has succeeded in planting the seeds of suspicion in millions of otherwise complacent minds that it might indeed have orchestrated not only the nation-wide assault against the six party list groups its National Security Adviser claims are communist fronts, but also large-scale fraud during and after the May 10 elections.

The fraud is fairly well-established, as is the disenfranchisement of close to a million voters. What is yet to be proven is whether the disenfranchisement was selective and not the result of plain Comelec incompetence—and whether the fraud was enough to put Mrs. Arroyo in the winning column at the expense of her chief rival Fernando Poe Jr.

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Except for those who have relatives among the 600 or so workers, and the members of the Philippine “humanitarian” mission in Iraq, most Filipinos don’t give a hoot about what’s happening in that country.

The few who do are concerned with the safety of their kin and the loss of the dollars they’re getting from George W. Bush’s crony corporation Halliburton, and from the so-called Coalition Provisional Authority, the US’ cover for its colonial occupation of that country which has been footing the bill for the 51-member Philippine mission. When asked about what they think of the torture that went on in Abu Ghraib prison, most Filipinos would probably react in the same way one woman did over Philippine prime time television: so what, they’re all murderers, anyway.

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A hundred and forty-one dead in election-related incidents. Some candidates complaining that their votes were not being counted, or were being credited to their opponents. And there’s enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that many if not most of the local candidates for congressman to councilor were busy buying votes on election day.

There are also the reports of voters not finding their names in the voters’ lists nationwide, prompting Social Weather Stations to declare that as much as 2.5 percent, or some 900,000 of those who wanted to vote may have failed to do so.

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Despite all hopes to the contrary, the country will probably find out within the next few days that the contest for president was indeed between Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Fernando Poe Jr.

Contrary to the Poe camp’s predictions, the country should also be discovering that Mrs. Arroyo will continue to be its president for six more years—unless the country shifts to a parliamentary system of government, in which case she’s likely to be in Malacanang until she’s 70.

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A member of the US Special Forces bound his hands with rope and put a hood over his head. He was held in a room with the windows blacked-out and guarded round-the-clock. The guards taunted him with epithets like “shitbag” and “shithead.”

He was given food, but not enough so that he was always hungry. Wounded during his first days of captivity, his wound was left untreated, as US military intelligence interrogated him several hours each day.

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