US elections: Democracy wins!

Exactly 12:00 noon yesterday, the majority of Americans put a new driver in the White House. As the polls have predicted, it was a big win for Sen. Barrack Obama, who is now President-elect and the 44th President of the United States of America. As of press time, Sen. Obama had 338 votes in the Electoral College against Sen. John McCain’s 156 votes. Thus for all intents and purposes, this is a landslide victory for the Democratic Party and I guess for the rest of the world as well as all the stock exchanges throughout the world were all running high because of the Obama victory. Let’s hope that this global euphoria would not die out soon.

For the first time, we will be seeing a black man on top of the White House. Contrast this to the many centuries ago where the black man inside the White House is there as either a butler, a cook or a servant. What was remarkable albeit also historical in these Presidential elections was the huge turnout of voters that lined up the streets to vote for their candidates. This was even preceded with early voting by millions of voters a few days before Election Day. In some polling stations, there were up even by more than a hundred percent.

For most of yesterday morning, we were at SM’s Northwing Atrium for the “Election Watch” that was set up by the United States Embassy with Deputy Chief of Missions Paul Jones hosting the event for their guests. While it is not the first time that the US Embassy had an Election Watch, this one was historical. We were allowed to taste or sample how Americans would vote.

There were three voting machines set up on the floor, two required a ballot with the names of the candidates, while the one I used was the “touch screen” technology where you merely press on the names of the candidates you wished to vote and voila, you have already cast your ballot! Our friends Councilor Jack Jakosalem, Ruben Almendras, Tony Lozada, Kiting Moro and Ted Locson, too, lined themselves up to cast their votes in this mock elections. Indeed it was truly a mock election because even the British led by Tony and Moya Jackson were allowed to vote!

I told my our media friends Super Bobby Nalzaro, Nini Cabaero and Thea Riñen that now that we’ve sampled an electronic voting system, we as Cebu’s media personalities must push hard to make sure that this system is in place before the 2010 elections. Rep. Raul del Mar told me that this will be a reality in time for the Presidential elections in 2010. But I would like to suggest that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) start as soon as possible by putting up mock polling booths in major schools, shopping malls or even churches so that our voters would already get a taste of what they should expect by the 2010 elections.

Indeed, it was also a historic day of sorts for Cable News Network (CNN) because they came up also with a historic first, where they brought their star reporter Jessica Yellin inside a tent in Chicago where a video shot of her was taken by 35 High-Definition (HD) tv cameras and beamed via Hologram into the CNN Election Center in Atlanta to be interviewed by Wolf Blitzer. It really looked like what we saw years ago in the StarWars movies where Princess Leia was beamed via hologram. With this technology, someday you will see “Straight from the Sky” interviewing people through this technology. What we saw was a world’s first actual hologram live on tv.

Indeed it was truly a historic day for us. I guess for the rest of the world and someday after many years, when people ask you, where were you when President Obama won the US Presidency and you can say that I was at home watching CNN or in our case, at the SM’s Atrium attending the US Embassy’s Election Watch.

I’m sure that the world stood still for at least 12-hours until the announcement came that Sen. Barrack Obama won the Presidential derby. What for me is the clearest winner in that hotly contested Presidential race is Democracy itself, that in America, you can become a President even if you’re father came from Kenya and was only a US Senator for only four years. This is the real beauty of Democracy. It may not be perfect because there is still corruption in the US with the latest case, a Senator from Alaska convicted of corruption. But at least their system works!

What about the Philippines? What have we learned from the 21 months of the US election campaign? In my book, it is the wisdom of the Two Party system, the Democrats vs. the Republicans which hopefully would encourage our politicians to return to our old Nacionalista vs. Liberal Party and the other that their election technology works, that in just a few hours after the closing of the polling precincts, American had a new President!