Situation normal
May 15th, 2004
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.
All these add up to the disenfranchisement of a significant portion of the electorate, and to fraud, violence, and corruption. But as shocking as these may all be to anyone aware of what elections should be, and how the killings and the vote buying that went on last Monday were offenses against democratic practice, Philippine officialdom has characterized the last elections as “peaceful” and “credible.”
Senate President Franklin Drilon went even further last Thursday. He described the elections as “better than expected”, and cited the comment of an Afghani observer to prove it. This observer, Drilon said, “was impressed with what he saw” (and wants) “to replicate (it) in Afghanistan.”
But observers from the United States, Germany, and Australia said they were shocked rather than impressed. What shocked them most were the killings, and worse, most people’s taking them in stride, as if they were the most normal of occurrences.
Rebecca Lawson of the United States was particularly eloquent: “Genuine democracy does not allow the physical elimination of the opposition: the killing of campaigners and candidates.”
Reacting to these comments, the Philippine National Police did not deny that the killings did happen—how could it?—and instead chastised the latter observers. A PNP spokesman noted the supposed need for them to understand “Philippine culture” and “the electoral process.”
On the other hand, said the same spokesman, a group of mostly Third (and Fourth) World observers—in apparent reference to the group brought in by the United States to which Drilon’s Afghani observer belonged– found the elections to be “generally peaceful.”
Armed Forces Vice Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Rodolfo Garcia echoed the PNP, and suggested that the former observers were uninformed.
“If they were more familiar with our system,” he said, “perhaps they would appreciate it.”
Were the PNP and Garcia saying that political killings are part of “Philippine culture” and “our system” and thus things that can’t be avoided—and therefore beyond the power of the government agencies charged with that task, meaning the Commission on Elections through the PNP and the military, to prevent?
And was the PNP also saying that the killings are part of “the electoral process”? If this is what the PNP was indeed saying, and what Garcia was implying, God help this country because the killings are likely continue, and will get even worse as the population grows.
Neither police complacency and relativism, nor Afghani approval of what went on and is still going on, can be the benchmark for the credibility of elections in a country that has been holding them since 1947, and which has loudly proclaimed to all the four corners of the planet that it’s a democracy.
I am as eager as the next nationalist is to launch into a tirade on how the observers from the West shouldn’t be lecturing us on how to conduct our elections, and even to declare that Fourth World approval and admiration are what count. Unfortunately, doing so would mean applying standards too low to be standards, and could provide incompetence precisely the excuse it needs, even as it validates the view– widespread in the West– that Asian lives are cheap.
What the US’ Rebecca Lawson said was true—and never mind what her government intends to do in Iraq after June 30 when a transition government is supposed to be in place there.
The killing of campaigners and candidates does undermine not only the electoral process but also democracy itself. The killings after all not only intimidate other campaigners and candidates. They also literally limit the electorate’s choices of whom to vote for, despite elections’ being about choices.
In terms even the police, the military, and the Commission on Elections should be able to understand, what that bottom line principle demands is that they do that part of their jobs which says “to ensure peaceful elections.” Instead of premature declarations about the elections’ being peaceful while at the same time looking for excuses in an effort to explain why they were not, these agencies should have been earning their keep on the run-up to election day, on election day itself, and after, to prevent at least some of those deaths.
More than anything else, it is these killings that are, at this very moment, undermining the results of the elections, and putting in doubt the mandate of local officials including congressmen.
Fraud—at least on the scale that was alleged by the Fernando Poe camp last Tuesday—is yet to be proven, and there’s always room to argue that while the very poor among our voters accept bribes, they may not necessarily vote for the bribe-giver. But there is no arguing with the reality and finality of political killings.
Among those killings have been those of the campaigners, candidates and officials of the six party-list groups to which the media usually attach the word militant, but to describe which the police and the military use less politic words. These groups are Bayan Muna, Anakpawis, Anakbayan, Migrante, Gabriela, and Suara.
In the last several weeks, the focus by both the government and the media has been on these groups’ supposed links to the New People’s Army. It has been argued that these links give them an edge over other party-list groups, and that NPA support for them undermines democratic choice. There are also allegations that the NPA has stopped other party-list groups from campaigning in their areas of influence.
These claims have been made in the context of a horrific situation: the killing of over 40 people from these groups, primarily from Bayan Muna. These killings basically have the same purpose: to intimidate campaigners and candidates, and to eliminate these groups’ candidates from the list of choices the electorate can make, this time in the party list elections.
And yet, just like the killing of campaigners and candidates from the traditional parties, these killings do not seem disturbing to either the police, the military or the Commission on Elections.
Neither have these killings disturbed the media, despite their own frequent reports on them. On the contrary. Unlike the traditional parties, the militant party list groups have instead been taking a drubbing not only from the government, but also from certain sectors of the media even as the killing of their members and candidates continued.
It’s been too much like Nero fiddling while Rome burns, or the US’ attacking Iraq while Al Qaeda escapes, this focus on the party-list groups’ ideological preferences and alleged NPA support. What all these add up to is a mind-set that sees political killings as “normal,” part of “the political process” and “our system”– and, in the case of the party-list groups, perhaps even “deserved.”
Apparently it’s time for everyone to rethink what’s “normal”—to recognize that the very bottom line in a country that calls itself democratic is the protection of the people’s right to choose. In this country, what can best assure that is to keep campaigners and candidates, including those some of us love to hate, alive.
(Today/abs-cbnNEWS.com)