Political Maturity

For their supposed “political immaturity,” Filipino voters are often easily blamed for electing people who end up making public office a public mistrust. But this is tantamount to blaming the victims of a tragedy for what befell them rather than what or who caused the tragedy.

I tend to agree with a friend’s assertion that most Filipino voters today have reached a certain level of political maturity. The problem, my friend says, is that even if they vote with their conscience and vote for principled candidates, voters are not assured if their votes get counted correctly.

This brings us to an uneasy feeling once some administration national candidates who, even if they are faring poorly in poll surveys, boast of making it on election day because of what they claim as the comparative edge of government machinery.

With the “hello Garci” scandal still fresh in the public memory, we couldn’t help but suspect that the machinery that some government bets boast about also refers to machinery, which can turn around what voters actually write on their ballots.

Machinery also includes money. And there’s no doubt, government has the advantage of disbursing funds to aid or influence election results. The “fertilizer scam,” for example, is also still fresh in the public memory, at least for those who don’t have amnesia. The “fertilizer funds” disbursed during the 2004 presidential campaigns became scandalous and questionable after it was found out that congress representatives in non-agricultural districts were also given millions in fertilizer funds.

Additional pork barrel funds are often released and increase in government workers’ pay is often announced during the electoral campaigns. These are part of government machinery.

This early, meanwhile, no less than Department of Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales pledged to give barangay (village) captains in Ilo-ilo P10,000 each if they give a clean sweep for the administration’s 12 senatorial bets. Even if the P10,000 for each barangay captain would come from Gonzales’ own pocket, the controversial promise from Gonzales tells much about how government is using its machinery of which Gonzales’ office is a part.

Since Gonzales’ offer has already been out in the open, our hope is that the barangay captains won’t play Judas. Let’s hope these barangay captains and the electorate of Ilo-ilo won’t be blinded by a few pieces of silver.

So I often cringe each time the electorate, including you and me, are often blamed for our “political immaturity” in electing candidates who end up squeezing us like lemons.

After the Marcoses were ousted in February 1986, one of our aspirations was that the electoral institution in this country would unfold as one of the true pillars of democracy. But election commissioners, with backing from some top guns, screwed up the public clamor to computerize our elections. The commission prefers our antiquated election system, which is vulnerable to irregularities such as vote-padding.

So are Filipino voters immature? Tell that to the marines.