The task of getting rid of electoral fraud cannot be the lone responsibility of one movement but a joint effort by both government and civil society. That is why in a free society, people are encouraged to participate in good governance, even to form themselves into organized movements and associations that will help rid it of corrupt and fraudulent practices, as well as safeguard and sustain the true meaning of democracy which is “the rule of the people.” Public officials who advocate the curtailment of this freedom and participation of the people are dangerous to the survival of democracy. They must be reminded that in a democracy, “government is created by elections.”

The National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections – NAMFREL – was the lone CSO that dared to monitor the conduct of the 1986 Snap Elections and against all odds, braved the barricades to try the impossible – free and fair elections in the age of the dictatorship.

It is sad and alarming that a public official calls for the decimation of a Civil Society Organization that is synonymous with the 1986 Peaceful People Power Revolution, especially at a time when the legacy of beloved President Cory Aquino has once again stirred the hearts and minds of Filipinos to value our freedom and democracy and never again allow the tyranny of corrupted power to oppress us. And NAMFREL continues to be pro-active in the preservation of our freedom and the flourishing of our democratic institutions.

I am reminded of a Biblical passage that would be applicable for all concerned in this unfortunate situation: “HE WHO IS WITHOUT SIN LET HIM CAST THE FIRST STONE.”

(signed)
Ambassador Henrietta T. De Villa
Namfrel National Chairperson

As President of the Republic, Cory was far from perfect. But, her actions and decisions were always guided by hard and fast principles. It was ever evident that, in her heart and mind, the well-being of the nation was what she cared about. And to the end, she was fearless and stalwart in her defense of what remains good of the Philippines.

We, the Filipino people, owe her our gratitude and love. She will always be the mother of our country’s rebirth after the tyranny of the Marcos dictatorship. Cory Aquino, the first woman chief executive of the Philippines, is the symbol of our fight against those who would malign our hard-earned freedom. She is the inspiration of our vigilance against political ills that plague our government today.

Let us hope that Cory’s brand of leadership, which was always rooted in faith, family values and a genuine compassion for the Filipino people, will serve as an example to our future heads of state. Let us honor her memory by making sure we have deserving leaders in 2010 and onwards.

JC Delos Reyes, presidential candidate of Ang Kapatiran Party

I don’t mind having these presidential debates. In fact, I find it somehow refreshing to see the presidentiables no longer devoting much of their energies to practicing their jingles and dance steps; to see them participating in serious talks although one of them—you know who is he—would prefer cracking jokes to talking serious stuff.

But what rankles me is that in all these presidential debates, forums—whatever you call them—JC Delos Reyes, the presidential candidate of Ang Kapatiran Party, is almost always absent.

Was he invited but chose to decline the invitation? Was he not invited at all? Or were the organizers of these debates unaware of his existence?

I don’t know. But I do know that JC Delos Reyes is a presidential candidate we should also seriously consider.

I am against Con-Ass. I oppose Charter Change. Not because I am an oppositionist, and not because I am a Government destabilizer.

The attempts by the Administration to change the Constitution are claimed to be principled and committed stands for change. Yet the push for a Constitutional Assembly, as it stands now, is consistent with the outright and deliberate demands and desires of This Government to perpetuate itself in power. It is consistent with the outright and deliberate attempts to silence dissent and opposition. It is the outright and deliberate desire to bastardize the document that stands for our country and our people.

While sitting through these talks, I couldn’t help but be actually pleased with this move by ABS-CBN, despite the fact that some view it as though a commercialized propaganda by the network. Well, truth be told, other media can be indeed used for public vigilance. However, no assurance of safety and security has been set for its citizen informants, just like it had always been. ABS-CBN’s vigilance campaign had been thought out and had security measures taken to ensure the safety of its “Boto Patrollers.”

Which brings me to the thought: With this country’s undying political unrest, democracy left to abandon, at most, will it even ever be possible to be perpetually vigilant for our country?

As forefront witnesses to this unrest, we already know this following truth disclosed by Mr. Antonio Tabucchi: “But democracy isn’t a state of perfection.” Then it continues with the line: “It has to be improved, and that means constant vigilance.”

There had never been a day when I didn’t wish for my country to be in a better state of things, in all aspects that matter most to the people. I’m shooting way beyond the moon if I hope everything about the Philippines to be perfect, but if there’s really one thing I really cross my fingers to, it’s that for the country’s political state to be truly filled with the sincerest, most honest-to-goodness, true leaders and heroes for the nation. With responsible leaders, not only are our predicaments looked and worked into diligently, but seeing them work responsibly heightens our inspiration to be better citizens for the country too.

For now, I can only wish.

As citizens, we can always do something about day-to-day disorders, the political kind and whatnot. We can choose to document misdeeds and report them to authorities. But, as always the case, this is easier said than done. Even with our best interests to keep watch for our country, reporting misdemeanors and doing something about our constant vigilance can put our safety, and even our loved ones, at risk.

The vigilance campaign model provided by ABS-CBN is good, great in fact. Definitely though, it had taken them a lot of time and resources for this campaign to go viral and be made known. Vigilance, one way or the other, does have its price. This price, undeniably, is something most of us are unwilling to pay, to the point of being “out of sight, out of mind” or just being plain jaded with the circumstances.

A resolution can be reached for this dilemma but how permanent it will be, we will never know. For now, whatever chances we are given, with assurance of safety on a platter, let’s season it with the benefit of the doubt and take it. Because we can never wait for the moment to be “just right”.

Screenshot of PoliticalArena.com

Here’s something that’s new — although not exactly unanticipated, considering the state of online-ness of Filipinos today — in the Philippine political arena. Exactly that, PoliticalArena.com. This “socio-political social networking site” aims to be an Internet venue for Filipinos to interact with presidential hopefuls and other candidates of the 2010 elections.

The site, “developed to promote transparency in the local political scene”, was launched to the media today at The Manila Peninsula in Makati City.

PoliticalArena.com will make it easy for Internet-enabled voters to have a bird’s-eye view of the political / electoral landscape for 2010. For starters, there’s a list of all those who have expressed, in one way or another, their intention to run for president of the republic next year. There are 22 in the list right now! Although, most of them are “perceived candidates” as of the moment.

The site hosts discussion boards, and polls, and aggregated news feeds — all to make it just a bit easier to decide on whom to vote for in 2010. Conceivably, PoliticalArena.com could also become a forum for the politicians to interface with their voters.

Kudos to the Commission on Elections for this innovative initiative! This online service is powered by the global network of 88DB.com, an online classified ads portal, and JobsDB.com, the leading jobs portal in the Asia Pacific region.

I don’t think “Congress” is a mathematical equation. It refers to the Lower house and the Senate in one convention. Acting alone, the Lower House was not the Congress at all. Therefore, HR1109 is a farce.

Here’s a blow-by-blow account of what transpired last 2 June 2009 — embarrassingly close to the country’s Independence Day.

But the real contention here is: taking into account the bleak history of Philippine governmental leadership, today is not the time to meddle with our Constitution. The fear among many Filipinos of Charter Change being used as a ploy by this regime to remain in power is not baseless. And by the very presence of this fear, this overwhelming concern over the peaceful transition of power in 2010, the Arroyo administration must not at this time espouse, nor even entertain, any move that will fuel these flames of fear.

If the sitting president believes in her own press releases that the country is doing well economically, then she must realize that any destabilizing factors — and HR1109 is one — will jeopardize and stunt the supposed growth our country is reportedly experiencing.

We must have elections in 2010. There is a need for change, yes, but not in the form of government, not in what the Constitution has stood for all these years. What Filipinos need now is a change of leadership.

Please view this Open Letter addressed to the members of the House of Representatives who voted for the passage of HR1109.

Here’s a more in-depth news analysis of what the nefarious attempt at forming a Constituent Assembly might mean.

Finally, here’s the site of the bloggers’ open letter addressed to the proponents of HR1109: NoToConAss.com.

Apparently, Villar owns or is part of real estate corporations in Las Piñas and Parañaque that, according to the case against him, gained from government projects through his actions as a senator.

The full story of the Senate case against Villar is found here. To give you the highlights:

Madrigal’s evidence purported to show that:

• Villar caused the realignment of the C-5 road extension project to benefit properties owned by his corporations;
• Villar is in a conflict-of-interest position for failure to divest himself of his interests in corporations whose properties were acquired by the government for road right-of-way for the Las Piñas-Parañaque road;
• He made an insertion of P200 million in the General Appropriations Act for 2008 though the project was already covered by an appropriation for the same amount in the same law.

- Inquirer.net, 25 May 2009

These are very serious accusations, and could cause Villar to be the first Philippine senator ever to be suspended or even removed from the Upper House. As Inquirer.net points out, Villar is the first of the “presidentiables” to be put on the spot. And so it begins.

What’s frustrating is how politicians tend to muddle issues by citing technicalities in their defense. Instead of directly answering Madrigal’s allegations, Villar has opted to hide behind his title — as if being a senator of the realm means one is above the law — to try and confuse the voting public. Why doesn’t Villar come out with the facts? Did he or did he not benefit from the government contracts covering the abovementioned government projects?

Villar snubbed the Senate and did not show up for the adjudicatory hearing, thereby foregoing the opportunity to clear his name. Turning around, he lambasted his fellows and the institution that he belongs to, claiming he would be found guilty. Isn’t this rather miserable, to have a senator expressing non-confidence for the Senate?

Instead, Villar has brought the issue to the public forum by using the media to his advantage. Will this move help his bid to hold the highest office in the land? But the real question is, will the truth of the issue at hand see the light of day?

The blogosphere––or the newfangled world of Web-based publishing––together with the surfeit of social networking services such as Facebook.com and Plurk.com, has virtually changed the landscape of today’s news-reading and -gathering, impacting even the ‘offline’ world of newspapers and magazines in a way that they might not even have foreseen. The upsurge in the number of blogs, and the evolution of the blog into more than merely an online journal of personal experiences, have contributed to its coming of age as a vital source of information for a growing number of people around the world.

The 44th president of the United States himself credits his victory to his campaign’s vigorous Internet-based activities. So that, even our own politicians have now begun to embrace the so-called “new media” in an attempt to benefit from the viral nature of online communications. Those who are active in the Internet’s sphere of social media might have noticed a number of high-profile politicians asking to be their “friends” on Facebook. Already, the World Wide Web is becoming cluttered with virtual campaign teasers in the guise of public service announcements.

As it has been for generations, it is the role of traditional media to be the public’s eyes and ears, to keep the voting public informed of all that needs to be known (plus a few extras thrown in) about election candidates. This role now extends to include media practitioners who exclusively, or to a certain degree, operate via the Internet; in other words, bloggers.
There are ongoing debates and heated discussions over the credibility of bloggers as media practitioners, a term that I use here quite liberally. Are bloggers journalists? And the more common retort from the more established of media personalities: Do bloggers even follow journalistic ethics?

Whether or not bloggers can be considered journalists in the strictest sense is beside the point here. The fact is, the quickening tidal wave of news readers (a.k.a. Web surfers) is rushing towards the shores of the blogosphere. Surveys and studies conducted by both traditional media companies as well as respected online publications have shown that, since the last couple of years, blog readership has grown by leaps and bounds, by megabytes and pageviews. To explain this phenomenon simply, allow me to present a theory.

Blogs, no matter that the publishing of their content might not be governed by rules of journalism, are valuable to an increasing number of readers due to their very character: honest, down-to-earth, man-on-the-street, personal. It could be ironic, because these characteristics are the very ones being attacked by newspaper publishers. But I digress. So, whether blogs (and other emerging forms of online content) are products of serious journalism or not, whether blogs are meant to supplant traditional forms of media or not… these are no longer the important questions in the fast-approaching election season. It remains that a sizable voting population rely on blogs for information, and politicians are now keenly aware of this fact.

Answering to the clamor for knowledge pertaining to the 2010 elections (and all its attendant news flashes, announcements, intrigues, controversies, etc.), there are Filipino bloggers who have taken it upon themselves to write about the major political exercise next year. Some have chosen to be non-partisan and focus on the elections from a more detached point of view, while others have dedicated entire blogs to the endorsement of particular candidates, especially those running for president of the republic. The term citizen journalism, which has been around for as long as I can remember, has never rung truer than today. The participation of average Filipinos in “the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information” (We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information, 2003) has never been more evident and pervasive than when they took up blogging.

That is, blogging for a cause. Or, blogging for advocacy. While the majority of blogs in this country still fall under the online diary category, it is important to know that there does exist a good number of “political blogs”, as they have come to be called, that serve various purposes. There are such blogs that carry discourses on issues concerning our country’s government; those that mean to influence readers to tow a political party line; those that aim to expose corruption and the not-so-unsubtle pursuits of those in power; and even blogs that intend solely to present sober (i.e., attempting to be politically uncolored) data regarding electoral candidates.

From now and ramping up to May 2010–provided the present administration does not rob us of our Constitutional right to elect more fitting leaders–blogs will be in a responsible position to contribute to an electoral process that will see better-informed voters, and even political candidates who will be somehow more available to their constituents. This is not to say that traditional forms of media performed in the past more poorly in their job of informing the public. It is to say, rather, that in this age of instant access to information, the Internet is most certainly the better medium; i.e., where people who use the Internet is concerned.

(To return–although treading lightly–to the discussion on the disparity between traditional media and new media, I would disagree that there is a dichotomy. Instead, a symbiotic partnership should evolve, and everyone will benefit from it, especially the reading public.)

In the hopes of providing voter’s education through a blog, and with the parallel objective of becoming a significant online resource on the coming elections, a group of politically-minded bloggers have banded together to form RP2010.com, with yours truly at the helm.

Having been a Namfrel volunteer since the age of 14, back in 1986 during the presidential snap elections, I have long aspired to participate in politics without necessarily being chin-deep in it. As a long-time columnist for a local daily in Davao City, I have found my political calling in the RP2010.com blog. It is a venue upon which we are able to express our views on the various aspects of the 2010 elections and its myriad issues, and in so doing, contribute in our small way to a brighter political future for the Philippines.

All the RP2010.com bloggers are free to express their own opinion, their own analyses, etc., but none are allowed to campaign for any candidate or political party. The purpose of this blog is to be a source of information. It will also eventually become a forum, which will welcome dissenting views, debates and the like. But, in order to gain the trust of our readers and the credibility as a repository of fair news and honest opinion, it will remain staunchly non-partisan.
Future sections in the pipeline for RP2010.com, the Election WatchBlog, include dedicated pages listing official candidates for national positions (president, vice-president, senators, congressmen), and pages detailing the platforms of the various political parties are also being considered. More contributors and authors are welcome to join this community blog.

What does it take to be a citizen journalist for the May 2010 Elections?

First, you would have to determine how you intend to participate in the whole political process. And, how involved you plan to be. Leading up to early next year, one way would be for you to play the role of educator (voter’s ed) or activist (encouraging eligible voters to go out and vote). Plenty of young, first-time voters are apparently unaware of how to go about being participatory citizens, so encouraging them and informing them could be a worthy advocacy for your blogging efforts.

Approaching the elections, and during the entire exercise, the more adventurous and brave among bloggers could opt to report on anomalies, corruption and fraud, the occurrence of which is unfortunately not far-fetched.

Of course, blogs could also become Namfrel clones, acting as early reporters of quick-count results. In the event that the Commission on Elections is not able to fully computerize the voting and canvassing of next year’s general elections, blogs could very well act as safeguards against dirty tricks against the honest conduct of elections. Where there is a dearth in information, blogs and the other tools afforded us by the Internet could fill in the gaps, thereby ensuring cleaner elections (or at least making it more difficult for unscrupulous politicians to perpetuate their filth).

The role of citizen journalism covers all of the above-mentioned potentialities (some of which are already realities). Bloggers as citizen journalists may not be considered full-fledged journalists by certain sectors of society, but they will be serious contributors to our nation’s political health in the foreseeable future.

Bloggers have proven their mettle several times in the Philippine social arena, by breaking the news, and leading public opinion, on certain issues in the past. Let us hope that, for 2010 and beyond, more and more bloggers will be part of a bigger service to the nation.

Politicians behave for a number of reasons. Some are driven by ideology, a category to which left-leaning politicians belong. Others feel so deeply about an issue, to the point of risking an electoral defeat. This is what exactly happened to Ralph Recto, principal author of E-VAT, who lost his second senatorial bid in 2007.

Untangling this web of complex motivations, public choice theory assumes that politicians behave to maximize their chances of re-election. Very simply, public choice theory says politicians are vote-maximizers.

Take the Cha-cha being hatched by the President’s men. Just this day, news broke out that Lakas-CMD, in its executive committee meeting, decided to put the Cha-cha bid on the back burner to avoid a 2010 election fiasco.

“Grim prospects of a resounding defeat in the 2010 national elections,” Ben Rosario of Manila Bulletin reports, “have prompted top officials of Lakas-CMD, the country’s most dominant political party, to give up the Charter Change (Cha-Cha) bid that is being espoused by its members in the House of Representatives.”

In contemplating for the fate of Cha-cha, its ardent proponents certainly had in mind the results of the surveys conducted by such polling institutions as SWS and Pulse Asia. Recent Pulse Asia survey, for instance, shows that a “sizable majority” or 64 percent of Filipinos do not think that it is appropriate now to tinker with the Constitution — a view “shared by majorities (60 to 70 percent) in all geographic areas and social groupings.”

This reality is not lost on the Cha-cha boys. Listen to Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri’s counsel to his colleagues. “I-withdraw n’yo na ang Cha-Cha, Mr. Zubiri, who presided over the meeting, was overheard as saying, adding, “Matatalo lang tayo sa 2010 pag tinuloy n’yo yan. Cha-Cha is a very unpopular issue; ayaw ng tao dyan,” Zubiri was overheard saying during the meeting.”