Recall petitions surge, but are they valid?

Recalls of public officials are surging. Comelec chairman Sixto Brillantes says about a hundred petitions for snap elections have been filed. The poll body must study each one to ascertain if the required number of signatories was met and if they are bonafide voters. After which, it must set aside hundreds of millions of pesos to supervise the campaigning and balloting for provincial governors, vice governors, and board members, and city or town mayors, vice mayors and councilors. All of that during an off-election year, between July 1, 2011 and June 30, 2012.

A recall is an exercise of representative democracy, by which citizens remove and replace bad elected officials before the end of their term. The constitutional provision is patterned after the United States recall system. The Local Government Code (R.A. 7160) prescribes the process of recall, with an amendment (R.A. 9244) doing away with tedious preliminary recall assemblies.

The right of recall can be abused. Writing for The American Thinker, J.R. Dunn noted: “A recall election is one of those things in which the perpetrators win even if they lose. An incumbent surviving a recall has wasted money, time, and energy, has suffered diversion from his actual work, and must deal with the bad publicity inevitably arising from the effort.” Dunn was talking about a similar spate of recalls in America, doubling in 2010 from 2009. Most controversial is that of Wisconsin, where six state senators are being recalled for endorsing the governor’s bill to limit union privileges, and three others for opposing it. State legislators are also being recalled in Illinois and Arizona. The dozens of other recalls are against American mayors and school board heads. In the Philippines, a recall move allegedly cost the life of Calbayog City mayor Reynaldo Uy last month.

The rash of recalls can be attributed to greater awareness of voters of goings-on in their provincial capitol, or city or town hall. Petitioners easily reach out to citizens banded into causes and groups, be they environmental, religious or livelihood. Personal computers have made drafting and printing petitions simple. There’s also the advent of social media, through which voters exchange views and organize themselves. Texting, Facebook and Twitter instantly spread news and views against hated officials. There are bloggers dedicated to regularly attacking selected officials for whatever motive.

A governor targeted for recall laments that one of his ward leaders signed the appeal because paid P500 by the petitioning election loser. That loser was reported to have bribed voters P2,000 each in May 2010 either to vote for him or, if committed to the other side, stay away from the polling precinct. Predictably he will run and bribe again, should the incumbent be recalled. If that fiend wins, what kind of racket will he commit at the provincial capitol to recoup his “investments”.

Recalls are for an all-encompassing “loss of confidence” in the local leader. They are forbidden during the incumbent’s first year in office, to allow him unimpeded work, and the last year, to not waste money since a regular election is coming up anyway. That means the recall can be done only during the second of the local official’s three-year term. But it’s only the first year of all incumbents and already there are a hundred recalls on file. The Comelec interprets the law to mean only the holding of special recall elections, not the filing of the petitions, are disallowed on Year One.

There ought to be a law against too early petitions, a mayor in the Visayas cries. Showing blogcasts as proof, he says that the recall against him started only a month-and-a-half after he took office. “Was that enough time for the signatories to lose confidence in my landslide victory?” he wonders. He’s lucky. In America, the president of the Arizona state senate was petitioned for recall on his 21st day in office; the mayor of Omaha, Nebraska, on the night of his reelection last November.

Palawan Gov. Baham Mitra, also a landslide winner after hurdling a disqualification suit, is preparing to contest the Comelec acceptance of premature petitions. Election lawyer Romulo Macalintal supports him. “The recall process starts with the gathering of signatures,” he says, “so if it is done within the first year of the incumbent’s term, then the ban renders it moot.” Petitioners counter that it can take months to gather signatures. To which Macalintal counters: “If it takes that long for them to get people to sign, then maybe the voters are not really disenchanted.”

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On the lighter side of the Spratlys tension, Miss Kalayaan Sarah Sopio Osorio was crowned last weekend as Mutya ng Palawan. The 18-year-old daughter of Kalayaan councilor Noel Osorio and municipal accountant Lucille Sopio bested 18 other contestants from as many Palawan towns to become yearlong ambassador of goodwill and tourism. Said the 5’7"-tall college sophomore during the question-and-answer portion of the beauty and brains tilt, “I joined to make people know about my municipality of Kalayaan, which is part of the Philippines only.”

Incidentally, Smart Communications is rushing to repair its cell site in Kalayaan’s Pag-asa island, corroded recently by salty breeze.

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Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., DWIZ, (882-AM).

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