Pink Power

It''s amazing how the Commission on Elections can so blithely violate its mandate. This is the institution that''s supposed to safeguard the process of voting. Its only role is to ensure that when the voters manifest their collective will (meaning they''ve actually busted their guts to walk all the way to a hot and filthy classroom so they can squeeze into a chair meant for an elementary kid and write the names of their candidate du jour), then that manifestation should be protected.

It''s real simple, right? All the Comelec has to do is watch the votes, and make sure the candidates get the votes they''ve been bestowed with by the electorate. But here''s the catch - before the voters get to select from the list of candidates, that list has to be drawn up first. And who does this simple task? Again, our very own Comelec.

So the game plan is (if you''re an evil slimy underhanded politician), and you want to affect the voting process, you make sure the list omits the name of the person or party you don''t particularly like. As is the case when the Comelec didn''t allow the accreditation of Ang Ladlad, the nation''s very first gay slash lesbian slash every other sexually oppressed political party.

Ang Ladlad has already labeled Comelec Chairman Benjamin Abalos Sr. as a homophobe. If I were an enterprising journalist wanting Pulitzer glory, I would start worming my way around the lives of his family, trying to sniff out the dirt on their sexuality. Good thing I''m not, and I''m really so busy, so I guess he can rest easy from being the target of my malevolence. But the thing is, that still leaves the question of "why."

Why on earth would Abalos and the Comelec think that gay voters are phantom voters? They don''t believe gay people exist? Is this some kind of cosmic denial available only in certain age groups? Or did they have some kind of bad homosexual experience that they wish never happened, and this is their way of paying back for that bad memory of even worse sex?

Shouldn''t the Comelec just automatically have accredited Ang Ladlad as a party? Now if the Comelec really believed that Ang Ladlad doesn''t have any chances of getting enough votes to elect a party-list representative in Congress, shouldn''t the Comelec just have allowed the gay party to suffer a humiliating setback at the hands of those who have the real power to bring them into office, the voters?

Or is it afraid of the numbers and power of the pink vote, and didn''t want the nightmare of having a gay Congressperson (Congressgay?), so that by the simple expedient of leaving out one name from a list, it solved its nightmare, effectively disenfranchising the gay vote?

But that''s not why the Comelec is there. It''s supposed to protect the votes, not frustrate the voters. So why is it stubbornly not getting used to the fact that queer is here?

There have now been charges that the administration is using the party list system to get its own dogs into Congress, by registering bogus parties that aren''t really representatives of marginalized groups. In so doing, those in power will get to have more power. That means, of course, that those marginalized will remain in the outskirts, as another avenue, which the Constitution intended as a mechanism to express themselves, gets cut off from their reach.

As was so snappily expressed by Danton Remoto, Ang Ladlad chairman, the pink voters are not phantoms, but rather, the opera itself. I''m glad to see them taking this setback in stride (and in style), and instead of wallowing in self-pity and apathy, using this as yet another platform to showcase the plight of the oppressed.

It takes object lessons, such as Comelec''s idiotic stance, to highlight discrimination. The fact remains that bigotry still exists. And when such bigotry spews from the highest level, then the more it can shock and galvanize people, in the end coming around and biting back its very source.

While there may be no Congressgay elected this year, as Danton Remoto says, perhaps in 2010, when today''s groundwork will have been laid, the pink vote will be cast in black and white.