Rampant cheating and violence have always been the standard in every elections we have had in the past. Philippine elections have always been marred by accusations of fraud and whatever dirty tricks politicians have. Let's face it, cheating is a common staple in Philippine politics.
Can we consider this year's elections as being clean and honest? This is what we are made to believe considering the news reports a day after the elections. We saw candidates conceding after seeing the numbers, something we haven't seen in a long while. Commentators said we have had, thanks to automation, the cleanest elections yet. But do we?
Not if you ask me. Election related death toll of a 112 does not make it clean. It makes it very dirty! How much blood should we spill every election time? This blood letting should come to a close.
The reason why we were so eager to automate the elections is so we can safeguard the sanctity of the ballot. However, as a nation who has undergone the process of selecting its leaders through this process for decades, we should have been old enough to know that cheating does not only happen during the counting. Cheating during the counting is just one way of rigging the results of the polls. Cheating happens even before the official campaign period starts.
Ir is called dirty politics and that we have plenty of. These dirty politicians will have a go of it no matter what the cost. Every warlord who has the "goons, guns and gold" will have all the dirty tricks thrown at the arena even if it means killing whoever stands in the way. Remember the Maguindanao massacre? What about the elections that happened in precincts in the far-flung areas? These are all riddled with anomalies. No, I don't think we had a clean, honest elections. We are still in square one.
For a true democracy to work, the people's voice must be the strongest, not those who prophesied they are God sent or worse, those who will make everything possible so that they can rule for their own benefit.
4 comments:
I know the exercise we just have is not perfect. Even our electorates didn't learned from the past and still voted those who we consider "undesirables". But statistic will show this election was so far the less violent and we have minimized fraud because of our vigilance. It may take another election or two to iradicate this anomalies. And so far we're going to the right direction.
All we need is a little bit more patience and perseverance, I guess.
Blogusvox We are still hearing news reports of more cheating. These are all unsubstantiated, of course. It is so easy to cry foul but proving it is another thing. Hopefully, we have seen less violence and fraud. Well, we can just hope at this time.
it's true. the elections are not clean. the minimal amount of death does not say it is clean. it can be described as less violent.
bing Exactly
Post a Comment