Winners and Losers

In life we win some, we lose some. In the last elections, more aspirants lost than those who won. There were more who lost because there simply were just too many candidates vying for few positions. This reminds us of the hordes of jobless applicants, who would queue up for a single vacant job position in a government or private outfit.

Victory in the elections is definitely as sweet and as ecstatic as the triumphant joy of a winning soccer team in the World Cup. But for those who won in the last election, victory can be genuinely sweet if they won cleanly and honestly. Otherwise, their victory is as bogus as the pirated CDs and DVDs that now litter our sidewalks.

For those who lost, don't despair. Loss or failure can still be turned into victory. Abraham Lincoln failed several times before he was finally elected president of the United States. Those who lost in the last political exercise now have three years to assess and re-examine themselves and to device strategies for the next elections. That is if they'll make politics their career or vocation. Otherwise, God may have other purposes for them, a realization that the likes of Manny Pacquiao must reflect on.

The biggest losers in the last elections are actually not the losing candidates. The biggest losers are the families of those who lost their lives while serving as members of the election board of inspectors. We mourn with the families of Leticia Ramos and Nelly Banaag, the teachers of Taysan, Batangas who were burned to death as they protected ballot boxes from the evil intent of those who sent five masked men who torched two classrooms of the Pinagbayanan Elementary School there.

Many lives were lost before, during and after the elections, which police and election officials have described as “generally peaceful.” The generally-peaceful assessment of the last elections was based on comparative figures of casualties in the 2004 and May 14 elections.

A Catholic Media Network priest-commentator noted that the shooting spree of a deranged youth that claimed 32 lives at Virginia Tech in the US was considered a “massacre” while a stampede during a Manila noontime show where scores were killed and wounded was described as a “tragedy.” Ironically, amid election-related killings that reached more than 100, a top police official and even COMELEC officials had declared that the last elections were “generally peaceful,” the priest-commentator pointed.

We are lucky in Baguio and Benguet because -- unlike in some Wild, Wild, West towns of Abra and in Mindanao -- our board of inspectors and canvassers need not cower in fear as they manually count and tally votes. Despite allegations of vote-buying, Baguio and Benguet are some of the lucky places where losing candidates would immediately reconcile with and hug their political opponents. Except Abra, the elections in the Cordillera were indeed generally peaceful.

But the total picture shows that our country is still run like hell.

The elections are the means by which ordinary citizens participate in a supposedly democratic process of choosing men and women to represent them. But the widespread reports of vote-shaving, vote-padding, and other irregularities plus the accompanying violence and terror all show that we still have a long way to go as a democracy.

We may not even qualify as a democracy because the names of persons, which we write on the ballot every election, are not always correctly counted and tallied. In some towns, a candidate may have won through the ballot, but he may not survive his political rival’s bullet.

That a few powerful people continue to make a mockery of our elections prevents us from evolving as a true democracy. It is this mockery that continues to send more and more brothers and sisters to leave the country for good. The big losers in the process are us, ordinary folk, who are forced to bear the consequences and curse of misrule and bad governance.