THE serious damage wrought by recent typhoon Santi on Batangas’s “Bridge of Promise”—a key supply lane for all terminals and oil depots in the area—underscores once more the compelling message that climate change cannot be ignored in the government’s development planning and the crafting of the budget.

The “Bridge of Promise” is used by oil tankers to ferry petroleum products, among other vital commodities of traders, to Metro Manila and nearby provinces from Batangas. Its continued disrepair, therefore,  is alarming authorities who fret that it might result in supply disruptions, at a time when that scenario is already being raised by oil companies opposed to Executive Order 839, freezing oil prices in Luzon to October 15 levels. But that’s another story. The risk of shortage from any prolonged inability to use the established route via the Batangas bridge in Barangay Calumpang is something real, not conjured, and requires attention—not just through the round-the-clock work by the Department of Public Works and Highways, but the timely sourcing of funds needed for the repair.

In previous administrations, for decades the problems faced by the Department of Education (DepEd) had come like clockwork. The public could almost set their calendar based on its regularity. There were very little variations save for the calendar year.

Perpetually short of funds despite constitutional priorities, classroom shortage was a constant curse. Moreover, public-school officials snuck in and charged incremental fees, effectively bloating the cost of education despite statutory limits.

Perhaps its most institutionally heartrending involves the perennially unsung. Simply look at the government pension fund’s largest constituency. Public-school teachers are perpetually victimized—hailed as heroes but treated like shit.

When Education Secretary Jesli Lapus took the problematic portfolio there were below-the-line initiatives he prioritized. These profoundly altered the polemic paradigm. He tapped non-traditional sources of capital, infusing strategic partnerships with the private sector where surpluses were re-channeled to a sector long anemic from neglect.

Did you know that the first time paper ballots were used in an election in the United States was in 1629 to elect a pastor for the Salem Church in the Massachusetts Bay Colony? So writes Douglas Jones of the University of Iowa in A Brief Illustrated History of Voting, a work in progress on the Web, began in 2001 and last updated in 2003.

Did you know that 369 years later, in one weekend election in Michigan, voters sat down in polling places to vote for a total of 50 state officials? In a full year’s cycle of elections, they would go to the polls to vote anywhere from 80 to 175 officials! “Rescue voting from the long ballot,”  decried Earl Ryan, president of the Citizens Research Council of Michigan in an Ann Arbor Rotary Club meeting in January 1999.

As for us, in the forthcoming 2010 elections, I counted 35 officials that each Filipino voter must vote for, from President, Vice President, senators and congressmen to local officials from provincial governors and board members all the way to barangay captains and councilors. Is it not a surprise then that we are bombarded by infomercials, music videos, tarpaulins that blaze names and faces of likely candidates? Have democratic elections become a game of name recall?