De facto disenfranchisement

This country is headed for disaster in 2004, and no one is doing anything about it.

The other Sunday I went to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) branch in my city for validation of my voter’s ID. I was told they had decided to dedicate the entire day to last-minute registration of new voters. The line of applicants was a mile long.

Two days later I returned. I was issued two application forms and a number. Again there was a long line. My slip of paper said I was more than a hundred numbers away from the one that was being called. As in most other government offices, that place was designed for the public’s maximum discomfort. It was hot, dusty and noisy outside the Comelec office, where chairs had been placed in rows for those waiting for validation. Watching that line move I could see I would have to wait half a day for my number to be called. I left.

Since then I’ve been asking around and learning that most of the people I know have also been deterred by the chaos and long lines at Comelec offices and have not bothered to get their validated voter’s ID.

A registered voter in Tagaytay told me that the queues in his city are so long because there are only two computers for the validation process. He managed to get his validated ID with the help of a friend at City Hall.

If there are only two computers in a city like Tagaytay, how bad is it in other areas?

In the third millennium, in the age of the Internet, we shouldn’t even be bothering anymore about getting such ID cards; they should have been issued ages ago. Instead what I have is a piece of paper with my name, address and barangay handwritten on it by some Comelec-deputized teacher. I’ve held on to that piece of paper for years. Many other people I know have lost theirs.

Considering the choice of candidates for the presidency in 2004, I’m not that eager to vote. But I’m worried that if I don’t get that validation and boycott the elections, someone else might use my name and vote for the worst candidate.

In a democracy, the power of the vote is people power. Why is the Comelec making the validation process such torture for voters? Is someone doing this deliberately, as part of a grand plan for massive poll cheating in 2004?

A friend called it de facto disenfranchisement, and after going through that hell, I’m ready to agree.

* * *

Yesterday we received a report that one of the computers used for voter registration and validation in Angeles City was missing, together with all the data it contained on about 4,000 voters. Doesn’t anyone make copies of such vital data? Not in the Philippines. Those 4,000 voters have to register and go through the validation process again.

Two other computers used as "data collection machines" of the Comelec were temporarily stored at the Nepo shopping mall, according to the report. The computer monitors were sent for repairs and then to the home of the city’s deputy election officer, Ponciano Palo. The guy was treating colleagues to a barbeque at his home when he was shot dead last month. The murder remains unsolved and the monitors are missing.

That reads like a terrible script for a B movie, and there must be many other such stories all over this benighted country.

If voter registration and validation are such a mess, I can understand why the absentee voting experiment has been a failure.

* * *

After all that hype about poll modernization, what is the Comelec finally coming up with in May 2004? Pilot-testing of computerized voting in only 15 areas: Metro Manila and the Autonomous Region in Muslim Minda-nao; the provinces of Albay, Bataan and Cebu; and the ci-ties of Bacolod, Baguio, Cagayan de Oro, Cebu, Cotabato, Iloilo, Isabela, Lapu-Lapu, Mandaue and Talisay.

Why only 15? Because, we are told, the Comelec lacked funds and time to implement full automation.

Would a half-baked poll automation be better than no automation at all? The way I see it, we have a recipe here for election failure.

Now instead of worrying simply about ballot-snatching, ghost voters and the usual guns, goons and gold, Fi-lipinos also have to worry about computerized cheating or plain stupidity in handling partial poll automation.

Worse, the Comelec seems determined to get rid of those pests belonging to the National Movement for Free Elections. For the first time since the Marcos regime, Namfrel won’t be conducting a quick count, even if votes will still be tallied manually in more than half of the archipelago.

* * *

Since the Comelec is an independent constitutional body, Malacañang can say it can do nothing about the way the 2004 elections will be conducted.

But more than a peace pact with the Moro Islamic Li-beration Front, which continues to consort with Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists while holding a hand out for $30 million in proffered US development aid, President Arroyo should make the holding of honest, orderly and credible elections next year her legacy.

She should make this her priority because there is persistent suspicion that the Comelec, which is headed by her political ally who once belonged to her Lakas-CMD party, is laying the groundwork for massive cheating in 2004.

Next May’s poll exercise will be the nation’s first general elections since EDSA II. You can see the forces that faced off in that political upheaval gearing for another showdown in May. The 2004 elections can finally bring the stability that has eluded the nation since January 2001. But elections marred by massive cheating and chaos can put the nation on an irreversible path to ruin.

Voters will be making their choices for an average of 20 positions next May. If the elections are conducted in a disastrous way, we are sure to see violence, and we will have electoral protests all the way to 2010.

If Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is once again blessed by providence and wins a six-year term in elections that lack credibility, she is the one who will reap the whirlwind.