One cheer for democracy
A while back, I was talking to a fellow American expat about the upcoming elections here. Like me, he has made the Philippines his home for several years. I pointed out that I no longer bothered to comment about local politics, certainly not in a newspaper column. He asked why and I said we had just gone through our own emotional presidential race in the US; I’d had enough political drama. Plus I get tired of receiving vaguely threatening letters on attorney’s stationery with attached copies of my articles highlighted in yellow. “Anyway,” I added about the Philippine contest, “this is their clambake, not ours.” The fellow expat chuckled and pointed out: “Well, I got news for you, pal. Whoever wins, it’s gonna be your clams baking along with everybody else’s.”
What’s surprising, as the election results wrap up, is how quickly those clams baked. I mean, two to three days? Full precinct numbers? Now, that’s how to run an automated election. I wish the Philippines could teach those primitive, provincial backwaters — like Florida — how it’s done. Jam those shaded boxes into the PCOS and watch the results light up the boards at Ethernet speed! (Apparently the Mercury Retrograde didn’t affect ballot machines.) No more time for stolen ballot boxes at gunpoint! No more dagdag bawas! Okay, there was reported vote buying at a number of precincts, and a dozen or so deaths, but still… At least no “hanging chads,” like in Florida, circa 2000. No month-long waiting period as the Supreme Court decides whether to recount ballots (see: Gore v. Bush). No time to think up ways to steal the vote. Blink, and the election’s over.
Of course, as in the US, that’s when the real work — the hard stuff — begins. Making things actually happen after an election is over is like trying to get the cable guy to provide service after he’s hooked up your box and sped off on his Honda scooter. But still, I think this unprecedented democratic exercise deserves at least one robust cheer (with apologies to E.M. Forster) from the Filipino people.
Yes, there will be post-election protests filed, lawyers will be scampering around for months, piling up the paperwork at Comelec. (Erap and Jamby are already crying electronic fraud.) But note the lack of widespread acrimony, threats and bad juju. Note the lovely, quiet sound of order. What a thing of beauty it is when such a large number of voters (50 million or so… not bad) actually get to register their choice so swiftly.
I must humbly point out that it was own country that laid the groundwork for such an exercise, back in the 1770s. (It’s easy to forget this nowadays, when people think America’s only contribution to the world was the iPod and Miley Cyrus videos.) At that time, participatory democracy was a mere pipe dream of European intellectuals, but people like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin actually thought it could work. Granted, the original framers of the US Constitution — Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and others — had their doubts, even about adding a “Bill of Rights,” because they thought such an addition would curtail other, unspecified rights by listing down only those protected under the Constitution. And sure, the framers were largely about protecting landowners’ property, in the John Locke sense, and they really screwed the pooch on slavery… But what a radical idea: people electing their own leader! With a piece of paper! It just hadn’t been done before.
Okay, so over the next 200 years or so, like all good ideas, US democracy got distorted, degenerating into a battle between elites (usually) who are controlled by business interests and soft money. But that doesn’t explain the buzz people still get from actually casting a ballot.
Of the comments I monitored on Facebook here (yeah, I know, but people tend to be younger and more “emo” there, so they say what they feel), most seemed brimming with pride — not at the results, but at the exercise of voting itself. They were proud to be wearing that indelible ink, proud to have registered in time, proud to have actually made a choice. I don’t recall that level of positivity about voting back in 1998 or 2004; back then, there was the usual cynicism and mistrust, a frisson of fear blowing throughout the country. That feeling still persists, but this time, at least, it isn’t being focused on hanky-panky at the polls. Automation, as commentators pointed out, seems to have removed most opportunities for stealing.
Okay, so most of you weren’t too thrilled about your choices. But as the numbers settle down, people may begin to think about the “next” step in the democratic process — holding those elected people accountable to their posts. It’s a first step toward moving forward, I think, and worthy of at least one cheer.
