Expect deadlier, dirtier elections, as guns, trapos dominate

Recent parades of “trapos,” traditional politicians, to the Comelec were a portent. “Trapo” also means rag, so expect Election 2019 to be dirtier than ever.

Mostly political dynasts filed candidacies for congressional and local posts. They seek either reelection or to succeed or switch positions with kinsmen. Other bloodlines are off limits. In provinces and cities, spouses, parents and offspring are running mates for governor or mayor and vice. The few non-trapos who dared file candidacies will soon drop out. Unable to match the trapos’ war chests, they’ll be bribed to withdraw.

Dynasts can afford simultaneous campaign spending of family members. They use dirty wealth amassed from present office. Once they win they will steal more.

Siblings are even vying against each other. Outsiders see no point in joining. As blood is thicker than water, the rival siblings inevitably will reconcile. They will thence conspire to prolong their dynasties. The joke’s on the electorate.

Dominating for so long, dynasts no longer bat an eyelash justifying themselves. Some, while admitting to be dynasts, claim to be the “good” kind. Others deny dynastic intents, insisting that voters have free choice. All forget that the Constitution does not distinguish – but plainly prohibits all dynasties. They negate the will of the people who ratified the fundamental law. Yet they have the gall to proclaim to be running for the sake of the people. “Hypocrite” is too mild a term for them.

The dynastic nature of politics promotes person over platform. A political party is just to fill in the blank with in the candidacy certificate. Dynastic control and expansion is the basic objective.

A party name is handy only in the party-list voting. There the dynasts conjure all sorts of marginalized or under-represented sectors. Remember the presidential son who claimed to represent security guards and tricycle drivers? He hated them so much that they were the first to come to mind when he was looking for poor folk as party-list foil. And there’s that labor recruiter who claims to represent overseas workers. They run for party-list congressman only because other relatives already are running in the district. They think only they are worthy of public service.

A party must have been existent for a year to qualify for party-list electing. Millions of pesos change hands behind closed doors at the Comelec for unheard-of parties to be included in the ballot. Millions more, to be counted as winner. It’s impossible for anyone to have voted for those unknown groups. Yet they pop up as congressmen – by the dozens at that.

One hundred-eighty five parties have listed up. Vying for the 55 or so party-list seats, they have a three-to-one chance of making it. The multimillion-peso investment to be accredited and to win is well worth it. Every congressman gets secret pork barrel of P80 million a year. Their term is for three years.

Automated fraud will be perpetrated anew. It’s futile for info-technologists to expose the deceit in those Venezuelan voting machines. The Comelec will only pretend to listen, then go ahead and spend billions of pesos to lease-purchase, accessorize, and warehouse the gadgets. They never run out of alibis. The sales pitch to again use Smartmatic machines for 2019 is that they’d be fitted with the all-important voter-verifiable paper audit trail. Yet in 2016 Smartmatic only belatedly and grudgingly included such feature. The vote receipts then were unverifiable, because not containing the machine number, precinct location, and time of vote cast. If such paper trail is so important after all, then why did Comelec and Smartmatic belittle it in 2016? The answer is simple: kickbacks.

Expect the elections to be deadlier too. The past two years have shown two things. There simply are too many murderers-for-hire, and the police are incapable of preventing or arresting them. About 20,000 homicides remain unsolved, mostly of drug pushers and users. Three million firearms are on the loose. The emergent business of killing is so lucrative that the hired guns will make themselves available during the campaign. The stakes are high in the election – dynastic reign and the attendant political-financial benefits. Killing would become normal fare.

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