Jose Melo’s nightmare
SOME call it a youth revolution, the impulse to stand up and be counted in the year before the 2010 elections. The “Register and Vote” campaign is not the first of its kind, there have been many others, but it is arguably one of the most star-studded. The campaign was launched with a rock-concert-rally on May 14 in the depressed urban area of Barangay Tatalon, Quezon City. Over 1,000 people attended the event, whose musical showcase had crooners Cooky Chua and Luke Mijares and bands Kamikaze and MYMP romancing the half-barefoot residents of clapboard and tin homes in the village where Senator Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan first won as councilor at the age of 23.
And so Parokya ni Edgar roared into the night, and the crowd roared back to a stage that had Pangilinan’s Megastar waving to a crowd high on the methane of celebrity. The “Register and Vote” campaign, we are told, seeks to encourage voters to register for the 2010 elections.
“The challenge,” says Pangilinan, “is how to convince these 9 million first-time voters that if they unite and choose the right leaders, it will be the end of rotten governance.”
And perhaps in an effort to make the choice simpler, his wife Sharon Cuneta announced on the same night to his constituents (and the national media) that her husband was intending to run for the second-highest position in the land. Pangilinan had previously announced he would run for vice president, but it was an announcement that made little impact – until now.
The Megastar says that her husband has “proven his worth.”
Pangilinan says his wife will be seen more often in the registration campaign.
She says she will support him as the nation’s “Second Lady.”
He says his stepdaughter, celebrity KC Concepcion, whose fan base among the youth rivals her mother’s, is likely to also join the campaign for voters to register, thereby tossing a glittering bucket of political color into the necessary cause of voter suffrage, painting an otherwise noble movement as just another vehicle for someone’s political campaign.
And yet, in the grand carnival that is Philippine politics, Pangilinan still deserves credit for acknowledging his intent to run this early. I intended to write about the gallery of aspirants who “will let the people decide” whether they will run for the 2010 elections. I wanted to say just what I thought of Richard Gordon’s emotional breakdown at the ANC Leadership Forum when asked to talk about his heroes, and why, for example, I believe it was gutless for Governor Ed Panlilio to meander over grand ideas of “dialogue” and “democracy” when asked about his stand on reproductive health and contraception.
I wanted to talk about a leadership beyond statements of pursuing truth and justice, of “leading by example” and “love and service to the nation.” I wanted to say I found it odd that Senator Mar Roxas’ media campaign team allowed him to be shot for a commercial sitting prettily on a pedicab pedaled by a pair of skinny minors. I wanted to describe why it is stunning to hear a man with illusions of the presidency repeatedly describe himself and his platform as one in opposition to President Macapagal-Arroyo’s, forgetting perhaps that defining the enemy does not define the man.
And still I will respect them, no matter how little meat exists in the answers they rattled off to last week’s expectant Ateneo de Manila audience. They were there, in a rare instance, allowing themselves to be held momentarily accountable before national television – an exercise that several presidential aspirants clearly did not feel was necessary.
But this is not a column about them, or about what is ominous about Pangilinan’s campaign, not when Commission on Elections Chair Jose Melo announces to a nation gearing up for presidential elections that the 2010 change of presidency may in fact be a lost cause.
According to the former justice, partisan groups who want to stop the elections can attempt the same procurement anomaly case filed in 2003 against the Comelec and the Mega Pacific consortium. Melo claims the court challenge can be timed months before the balloting, and can jeopardize the P11.3-billion automation contract. If the case successfully merits a temporary restraining order, it will be too late for the Comelec to prepare for manual elections.
“That is what we are afraid of. That is sabotage. That is a no-election scenario. That would be chaos.”
It was bidding irregularities that caused the Supreme Court to void Mega Pacific’s P1.3-billion contract in 2003. It is not a surprise that the Comelec chairman believes it is possible for partisan groups to use any and all means to serve their political ambitions. That is a possibility we have learned to expect in a country where blocks of cash bribes are distributed in plain sight, and a favorite ring tone has the chief executive negotiating votes with an election chief. What is ominous is that the Comelec chairman assumes there is a probability our courts will rule in favor of a TRO.
“Let’s say by February, March or April, a TRO is suddenly issued, we will not have time to go manual,” he explained. “It keeps me up at night. That is my nightmare.”
The concession is this: that the Comelec may not be as transparent as they should be, and that procedural irregularities have occurred and can still occur – enough to convince a Supreme Court to risk losing an election on the basis of testimony by partisan groups with certain vested interests, enough to give a court veteran nightmares of a failed election.
Never mind that it is unreasonable for Melo to announce that there will be no time to prepare for manual elections. The elections are not negotiable. If there must be a contingency for manual counting to ensure that a new president will be sitting in Malacañang in 2010, nothing is stopping Melo from oiling the works now.
We live at a time when the phrase “twenty-ten” has been invested with almost-mythical significance, the magical moment when all heaven will descend and a rage of angels will wipe out the corrupt and the damned.
Melo says there will be a revolution without election – and I suspect it is not of the sort that ends with Sharon Cuneta singing to Kiko Pangilinan onstage.
Jun 14, 2009
Hi, very nice post. I have been wonder’n bout this issue,so thanks for posting
Aug 10, 2009
hi. just want to ask for your e-mail address. i am a sociology student from UP Los Banos and our organization will be having its anniversary. in line with this, we are looking for possible speakers. please inform me if you are interested. thank you. hope you’ll consider my request.