What a day it has been for me, both as a voter and as a volunteer for LENTE (Legal Network for Truthful Elections), a non-partisan, nationwide organization of lawyers, paralegals, law students and socio-civic conscious citizens dedicated to educating the Filipino voter on the sanctity, rudiments and importance of elections.
The 2013 elections is only the second time in Philippine electoral history whereby technology was used. This was supposed to be a move towards a more speedy, efficient and cleaner elections. However, speed was not a regular feature of this years elections, for one, it took me almost two hours to finally cast my vote. Although to be fair, in my precinct, the flow was quite orderly. In other parts of Leyte though, this could not be said, reports indicated that in some precincts, the PCOS machines bogged down, power outages occurred, and oversized ballots hampered the speedy processing of the same.
As is common in Philippine elections, vote buying was rampant, obscene, shameless and open. Still photographs and video recordings were made of massive vote buying. In one town, it was even reported that police vehicles were used in handing out money with the purpose of buying votes. On the other hand, reports also arrived that guns were drawn, causing panic in one precinct.
Another perennial feature of Philippine politics, political families still rule the tide. National television reported that in the Visayas, more than 80 political families were involved in the 2013 elections, in fact, this is the lowest compared to Luzon (400+) and Mindanao (90+).
As of the writing of this article, a total of 7 persons nationwide were reported to have died in election related violence. Commotions were observed in some precincts as supporters of opposing parties got carried away in their support of their respective candidates.
The Filipino nation has much to learn, much to fix, much to change in terms of conducting elections. Change, as the old adage says, begins with each of us.
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