Today may just be the noisiest day of the year. Starting today, many of the campaigns will be staging their grand rallies—their miting de avance—where they will make their last pitch for electoral victory through song, dance, comedy, drama. If you were an outsider looking in on this, you could be forgiven for remarking how remarkably like a fiesta it all seems.
Ah, but that’s the problem, isn’t it? While the people are being entertained and whipped up into a frenzy, we sort of forget that, for some of us, this is serious business. While many of us worry about how to ensure that we get to exercise our right to vote, that our votes are properly cast, and that we do our part in protecting the sanctity and integrity of elections, there are those who will actively seek to defeat those goals. There will be those, for instance, who will try everything to prevent us from voting.
So, we won’t rely on unofficial lists telling us that we cannot vote, right?
We won’t trust those bogus lists, because we know that it is almost standard operating procedure, during the last few days before an election, for fake lists of voters to proliferate. People carrying these lists will tell us that they got it from official sources, naturally, and sadly point out to us that we’re not on the list. As a consolation, they will offer us money to just stay home and not vote at all.
Unfortunately, the recent hacking of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) web site has given these jokers extra leverage. They will now say that the list was generated from leaked Comelec data. The average guy, knowing only what he hears from the scare jockeys of morning radio, will find that lie very easy to believe.
But we know better, don’t we? We know that the only reliable list of voters is the one at the polling places themselves. We know, for a fact, that the leaked data isn’t reliable, and I’m pretty sure we can recognize a vote-buying scheme when we see one—even when it is dressed up as “public service.” We know better. Just as we know that all these posts on social media, screaming bloody murder are all sound and fury signifying little beyond the determination of some quarters to sow confusion, doubt and fear.
We ought to know that a complaint can’t simply rely on descriptions of sentiment—“the people are getting mad”—and bare allegations of wrongdoing—“we are being cheated!” We understand that identifiable and verifiable details are critical to launch an investigation. Just as we understand that with the elections less than 72 hours away, we should turn away from all these distractions and focus on what matters.
On May 9, 2016, we should keep in mind that we are taking part in an ancient ritual that, for better or worse, we have placed at the core of our society. And in that ballot, is the crucible that will determine the strength, the resilience, the very character of our nation for the next six years.
We know that, the fiesta notwithstanding, that is something we cannot take lightly. Don’t we?
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James Arthur B. Jimenez is director of the Commission on Elections’s Education and Information Department.