|
In Bertolt Brecht’s play, Andrea tells Galileo, “Unhappy
is the land that breeds no hero,” to which Galileo
replied,
“No, Andrea, unhappy is the land that needs a hero.”
I WAS
quite awake when I had this nightmare last week: Benigno
“Ninoy” Aquino Jr. and Jose Rizal ran in a senatorial
election: Rizal ran second to topnotcher Aquino, albeit
by a slight margin. The distance of 85 years between
their death did not make the result, much less the
election itself, improbable to the Commission of
Elections (Comelec), which has a well-deserved
reputation for improbability.
Not that
the Comelec can be accused of rigging the election this
time. The exercise in improbability was the electoral
body’s way of proving that the mechanism for overseas
absentee voting is invulnerable to fraud, making the
system reliable for the 2010 elections. According to an
official, hackers couldn’t break into the system. This
makes Mercury Rising, in which an autistic child breaks
a security code, pure Hollywood fantasy, despite many
occasions when hackers were able to access into bank and
military systems.
Besides,
why should hackers be interested in the Comelec’s
exercise when it was not even known that it was
launching it? What, in any case, would be the incentive
for hackers or the usual experts in fraud, since the
“candidates” in the “nonbinding mock elections (sic)”
were the dead, the heroic dead?
Take a
look at the 20 so-called candidates and their so-called
political parties fielded by the clever minds in the
Comelec: Ninoy Aquino, identified with the Nacionalista
Party (NP) when he was a Liberal, having temporarily
joined the NP during President Garcia’s time out of
expediency; Jose Rizal, Juan Luna, Antonio Luna, Marcelo
H. del Pilar, Graciano Lopez Jaena (La Solidaridad)
Jose Abad Santos (Apple), Andres Bonifacio (Katipunan),
Emilio Aguinaldo, Gregorio H. del Pilar (Magdalo),
Emilio Jacinto, Apolinario Mabini, Melchora Aquino (Katipunan),
Teodora and Marcelo Alonzo (Orange), Felipe Agoncillo (Magdalo),
Jose Ma. Burgos and Jacinto Zamora (Gomburza—what
happened to Gomez?), Claro M. Recto (Nacionalista) and
Gabriela Silang (Rebolusyonaryo).
The
first wonder is why only 20 “candidates” were listed.
Philippine senatorial candidates have lately been in the
hundreds: a faithful simulation should reflect the
reality to be realistic. Besides, why only heroes when
political parties include villains as well as heroes or
supposed heroes? By pitting heroes against heroes, the
Comelec mock election is mockery twice confounded.
An
attempt at reality was the election of 12 (the figure in
the last real election) against 20, which means that
there are winners and losers.
These
are the winners in descending order: Aquino, Rizal, Jose
Abad Santos, Bonifacio, Aguinaldo, Emilio Jacinto,
Apolinario Mabini, Melchora Aquino, Teodora and Marcelo
Alonzo, Juan Luna and Felipe Agoncillo.
The
losers are Marcelo H. del Pilar, Gregorio H. del Pilar,
Antonio Luna, Graciano Lopez Jaena, Gabriela Silang,
Jose Ma. Burgos, Jacinto Zamora and Claro M. Recto. A
rather unusual bunch of “losers,” since Claro M. Recto
never lost a senatorial election (he predictably lost a
presidential), Gregorio del Pilar was a legendary and
glamorous figure, Gabriela Silang is enshrined in a
party-list organization, the Gomburza are certainly more
well-known than the Alonzos, and Graciano Lopez Jaena is
certainly far from a nonentity, being a great orator
himself. These poor “losers” can very well demand a
recount, and may very well consider an Orange Party
suspiciously biased for a region, although by all means,
Jose Abad Santos was heroic. With all due respect to the
first diplomat, Felipe Agoncillo, the second Magdalo
winner, how could he defeat Gabriela Silang, unless the
“voters” were told she inspired a “subversive”
organization? Unless, also, there was campaigning before
the mock-mock election.
Plaridel,
the organization of journalists, will certainly protest
the defeat of Marcelo H. del Pilar, who has been
regularly in the news, although not as much as Jose
Rizal and Andres Bonifacio, who were, respectively,
second and third in the “magic
12.”
Was there a Maguindanao somewhere in Agoncillo’s winning
over Lopez Jaena, the young General Gregorio del Pilar,
in whose body was found a woman’s lock, or Claro M.
Recto? Speaking of Recto, why wasn’t Jose P. Laurel
included in the list of candidates, or any dead
president for that matter—from Quezon to Marcos—to
reflect the reality of the good and bad, the heroes and
villains, in our political life?
There
could be surprising results.
Why the
fuss?
But why
should anyone be upset by a “harmless” exercise that was
merely designed to prove that the overseas absentee
voting technology is reliable? More to the point, that
the Comelec can be relied upon to conduct honest
elections in 2010? But couldn’t the Comelec geniuses
have thought of other ways of making a point than
exposing the overseas electorate’s familiarity with
“heroic history”? In doing so, the Comelec geniuses also
exposed their lack of imagination. They could have just
listed the letters of the alphabet and gotten the same
results.
In
fielding real, if dead, people, the mock-mock election
trivialized an already trivialized electoral process. An
election depends on many other things than the canvass
(although, of course, this has been a highly
questionable process), such as personality, campaigning,
propaganda, vote-buying and various forms of persuasion
and coercion. There was just no way for dead heroes to
campaign for the votes of the living electorate. Even
granting that the dead heroes have had their “media
exposure” in classrooms, history books, gossip and
commemorative speeches, there is still the last stages
of a political campaign, and that’s probably why “Ninoy”
was supreme over Rizal, Bonifacio and Juan Luna,
although quite understandable, if arguable, in the case
of Aguinaldo, who had the Great Plebeian executed for
treason. (In fairness, Aguinaldo later said that he
tried to stop the execution.)
It’s
difficult, indeed, to fathom the minds that conceived of
an exercise that mocks historical figures by making them
involuntarily participate in an “election” they would
not have considered in their lifetime. For example,
after Andres Bonifacio was defeated for various posts in
the Tejeros convention, winning only in a minor post
that was denied him, would he have participated in
another election, even from the grave? (Aguinaldo was
the exception: he ran for president during the days of
the Commonwealth against Manuel L. Quezon, and lost.)
The
Comelec has enough problems trying to prove its
reliability without having to raise suspicions about its
sanity.
Where
sanity begins
One way
the Comelec can attempt to prove its reliability, as
well as its sanity, is to set in order the registration
list, for as the latest election showed, thousands were
disenfranchised, either because their names were not in
the precinct lists or because these were “transferred”
to remote areas. If even the canvass of domestic votes
couldn’t be trusted, how could the canvass of absentee
overseas votes be any more reliable on the simple basis
of its “technology”?
That
major problem is compounded by other not-so-minor
problems, such as its way of recognizing political
parties, especially party lists, and names of
candidates, from nicknames to borrowed names in order to
confuse the electorate, and its impotence in enforcing
campaign laws. It can certainly argue that the clutter
of campaign garbage—posters, banners and billboards—is
the province of local governments, but as they are
election-related, the Comelec has the unused power to
rid the clutter. But then, it prefers to pass on the
responsibility to the environmental agencies. Of course,
again, it can always argue lack of funds and manpower.
But consider what it does with its funding and its
manpower.
One
glaring neglect, indifference or oversight of the
Comelec is the legal question of campaign finance. There
is supposed to be a legal limit to campaign spending,
but it looks the other way when a candidate blithely
announces that he has spent beyond the limit. Only once
was a senator, Raul Manglapus at that, ousted because he
“overspent” in an overspending election because he
rendered a true accounting.
We pride
ourselves of our American democratic image, where
candidates duly report their fundraising campaigns and
campaign expenditure. Celebrity donors are reported in
media. Hillary Clinton finds nothing wrong in accepting
contributions from lobbyists or political action
committees, while Barak Obama and John Edwards object to
them. This is brought out in the open.
But it’s
an empty boast. In the last Senate elections, all the
candidates said that their campaign money came from
unnamed supporters, relatives and friends; one candidate
even referred reporters to his report to the Comelec. It
would certainly be a surprise if the Comelec would
release the report. Even if it did, the record will show
that candidates spent their “personal funds,” since it
wouldn’t occur to the Bureau of Internal Revenue or any
antigraft body to inquire into the source of the wealth
that went into an expensive campaign. (Anyway, the
inquiry into “source of wealth” is selective.)
There is
not one candidate who named any corporation, vested
interest or person as a contributor to his or her war
chest. With all the candidates’ friends, relatives and
supporters contributing hard-earned—or otherwise—money
to political contests, the inevitable conclusion is that
the population is awash with money despite the fact that
political parties now are short of fees-paying members.
There are so many unknown and unsung political donors in
a population that politicians describe as suffering from
mass poverty.
In
fairness to candidates, they have a good reason to
conceal their financial contributors from public view
for fear that they will also be known to political
opponents. While contributors would get their reward in
the event of victory, they could also be exposed to
harassment, persecution, or worse, in the event of
defeat. The astute and timid contribute to “both” or
“all” sides of the political fence, but then some get
more than others, and there can be a problem. In our
society, no good deed goes unpunished.
That’s
the reason the Comelec, no less than other agencies
assigned to preserve public integrity, turns a blind eye
to campaign finance. In one way or another, everybody
benefits from our one “sunshine industry.” Any threat
of disclosure, especially of “ethnic” groups, can
destroy the edifice of politics. To disclose is to be
exposed, and that’s simply not the political way.
It’s not
likely then that electoral reforms can be undertaken in
any serious one, unless the new young legislators can
muster the votes, draft the right legislation and get
the executive branch to enforce them.
A very
tall order, indeed.
Apology
in order
Meanwhile, the best that historically sentimental
Filipinos (many still exist, after all) is to demand an
apology from the Comelec for trivializing and insulting
our heroes by exposing their memory to the mockery of
mock-mock elections in order to prove what cannot be
proved.
The
heroes’ place is in the hearts and minds of the people
not in the ballot boxes. Heroes may be well-known or
celebrated, but they have no business being exposed to a
popularity contests.
It’s not
because heroes are beyond criticism. The late National
Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin cast a critical eye
on Mabini and Bonifacio in his book A Question of
Heroes, but even when I disagreed with some of his
observations, our friendly quarrel was over certain
criteria for heroism. If we were casting aspersions, in
a manner of speaking, we were not casting ballots.
In
The Hero in History, the philosopher Sidney Hook
wrote that “the hero finds a fork in the historical
road, but he also helps, so to speak, to create it. He
increases the odds of success for the alternative he
chooses by virtue of extraordinary qualities he brings
to bear to realize it.”
But the
Comelec obviously agreed with Gerald W. Johnson, who
said that heroes were created by popular demand,
sometimes out of the scantiest materials, or none at
all, for that’s what it did with our heroes with their
scanty intellectual material.
But
perish the thought. There will be no apology, though I
wish to be wrong. |
