Surveys no match vs P1,000 per vote

“A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.” 

--Theodore Roosevelt

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY -- Most candidates in the Philippine elections share the hypocrisy of condemning the vote-buying as “evil”, but, which they actually also practice at the same time.
No candidate for a higher elective office will admit he or she is in cahoots with barangay officials (mostly the corrupt punong barangay and council members) when they buy votes done mostly on the eve before election day, or they will be disqualified if not go to jail for gross violation of fundamental election laws.
For several years now, however, Philippine elections--national and local--have been mostly decided by the amount of cash a voter will get in exchange for his precious vote.
The supposed tacit “market value”, according to sources, now ranges from P500 to P1,000 per vote.
If there are five voters in one family, that’s a cool P5,000, enough to feed five stomachs for a week in a modest household.
Times have changed and the methods being employed by corrupt candidates to hijack a fair and honest election have changed as well.

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The gnawing reality is that candidates who “won” in surveys but don’t have enough wads of bills to be distributed during the crucial hours prior to the opening of voting centers will mostly likely find themselves in the tail end.
Being whipped in the surveys can’t be considered an end of the world for certain candidates as long as they have substantial financial preparations which is very crucial in the homestretch.
Even some candidates with name-recall edge now aren’t confident enough of bagging a sure win unless they prepare a certain amount to pay corrupt voters.
This aberration in the Philippines’ electoral system had been passed on or has been a common practice for most candidates from one administration to another since the Marcos years.
The first known and the most scandalous massive vote-buying in the Philippine election history occurred during the 1986 presidential snap elections.
Even fake P100 bills were used by administration minions to ensure that the strongman was retained in power only to be kicked out by a bloodless revolution shortly after being declared as the “winner” by a jukebox election commission.
Since then, the general electoral exercises were never the same again: the moneyed, or those with gargantuan wherewithal--political parties and individual candidates for major positions--would always dominate the elections thereafter.

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The United Nations has spoken: Crimes against journalists and other media workers must not be tolerated.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that harassment and attacks are again on the rise even as he expressed alarm recently to the Human Rights Council there is a “shrinking civic space in every region of the globe and every corner of the internet.”
Guterres disclosed: “Activists and journalists are being targeted by surveillance, misinformation campaigns and threats of violence that too often result in actual violence. We must do more to defend defenders and end reprisals against those who share their human rights stories and we must hold accountable those who commit such acts.”
Over a thousand human rights defenders and journalists were killed in the last three years, according to the secretary-general.
Respect for human rights is just a game of words if there is no respect for people, he added.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNCHR) has also called for an independent and thorough review of all charges against Rappler chief executive officer Maria Ressa and other media professionals in the Philippines.
Rupert Colville, spokesman for UNCHR chief Michelle Bachelet, urged the Philippine judiciary to “safeguard their own independence by throwing out cases that are clearly politically motivated or are not in line with international human rights standards, including freedom of opinion and expression.”

‘My money, my future, my life’

“You learn more from losing than winning. You learn how to keep going.”
--Morgan Wootten

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY -- We see a lot of old and familiar faces gunning again for various positions in the May 2019 Philippine elections both in the local and national levels.
Some of them have now, at last, found major political parties to lean on when push comes to shove.
Without a decent or organized and recognized political party, any candidate in the Philippine elections will find himself shooting for the moon with his fingers.
Many of these names to be included in the official ballots of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) still don’t ring a bell for the hoi polloi even if they ran unsuccessfully at least four times in a row in the past elections.
And they are running anew; they aren’t losing hope.
Some of them behave and think like Sancho Panza, Don Quixote’s squire, who endlessly tilts at the imaginary windmills.

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We know some past losing candidates who have been spurned by their families that are against their continued hallucinations for a political lucky break.
Family insurrections erupt and marriages breaking up because "hard-headed" perennial losers in the clans refuse to call it a day and insist on running in almost all the elections--past, present, future.
Family funds went awry; the cookie jar intended for the children’s education, food, shelter, among other important family priorities, has been dried up.
The logical argument put forward by these “uncooperative” families was that if they were unsuccessful in the their first three attempts even in the lower positions, their chances of hitting a jackpot in the succeeding elections in the major positions would be nil.
The families argue that instead of wasting precious money for the campaign funds, the perennial losers should save it for their future and their children’s future.
Money, after all, doesn’t grow on trees.

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We have the most expensive elections in the world for a third world country.
A candidate for municipal councilor in a smallest town, for instance, will have to spend at least P200,000; a candidate for city councilor, even in a component city, will need to throw away at least P500,000, win or lose.
A candidate for vice mayor in a small municipality must have at least P5 million for his campaign expenses; a candidate for municipal mayor must shell out P10 to P15 million, win or lose.
A candidate for city mayor will have to bankroll at least P100 to P150 million for his campaign kitties, including the payola for corrupt village officials; a candidate for congressman must secure at least P300 million to tackle the election expenses in his district, win or lose.
The amount does not include moolas for vote buying (let’s not be hypocrites).
Not to mention expenses to be incurred by senatorial candidates which we all know could breach the P500 million mark in today’s “standard.”

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Life is extremely hard nowadays in the Philippines, which is being battered by an unprecedented inflation rate.
If you are a candidate in the May 2019 elections and you feel that your chances are like a dream in the Boogie Wonderland, it’s better to withdraw from the race or stay away from politics.
There’s no substitute for frugality in times of economic doldrums.
If we save our money, we can move around confidently and stress-free.
We can walk straight and smile knowing that we won’t be a burden to our family.
If we waste our “hard-earned” money in politics with no hope of recovering it (unless we commit graft and corruption once we are in power) immediately, it is tantamount to violations of our own human rights-- the fundamental right to live with dignity and self preservation.
We lose our self respect and become anti-social if we throw away something we earned through honest-to-goodness means and hard work only because of our misplaced ambition that is far from reality.