The alternative

CAN a candidate with no money, no power and no political network win against another candidate who has all those? Ed Panlilio’s election victory proved the future is unknowable and things can always change in ways that one can’t foresee. His opponents learned it the hard way.

Randy David might be interested in running a campaign just to educate people or to make a point. So what? Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo presents an excellent portrait of what power does to those who wield it—how it changes them and those they control. Who better to paint that portrait than an opponent whose hands have never been muddled by power? I for one would like to see David slay “Goliath” in a congressional race, but that’s getting way ahead of things because one would have to accept the certainty of a 2010 elections.

If David does run and lose against the President he can console himself with the fact that many other honorable citizens of this country have run political campaigns that were futile in terms of their chances of electoral victory, but which touched the lives of thousands of people nonetheless. Running in a political contest was worth the loss for them, because in doing so they had opened a few eyes or hearts to what was possible in politics, if only.

I’m sure David is not naïve to the travails of present-day political campaigning. It is a world that now belongs to professional political campaign organizers. Campaign strategists and hired guns oversee everything: filming TV commercials, coaching their clients about the way to behave during press conferences, spinning issues, even doing dirty tricks to destroy the opposition.

David has criticized the game enough to know that big money, the media and business interests have made the contemporary political scene into an arena where very diverse power-brokers clash.

Still, the experience of Ed Panlilio, and the left-leaning party-list groups (who are now aiming for Senate seats) has shown us that voters are still looking for candidates who they can believe in, and that voters still want to believe that an honest politician is not hopelessly out of date.

Today, when the outcome of a political campaign has more often to do with the way a candidate is packaged for public consumption than with a discussion of ideas and issues, we need more Randy Davids to throw their hat into the political arena. Today, when most of the politicians we see are dolts of one order or another, we need more candidates who don’t have a script and who can speak their hearts.

We will be all the better for it.

Overseas absentee voters could spell difference

While we’re on elections, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) expects some 700,000 overseas absentee voters to significantly influence the outcome of next year’s presidential elections.

We are counting on over a million overseas Filipinos to sign up as absentee voters, and at least 70 percent of them to actually cast their vote. This is enough critical mass to considerably affect the selection of the next President.

TUCP had obtained feedback from labor posts abroad, indicating a surge in the number of overseas Filipinos, mostly migrant workers, seeking to enlist as absentee voters for the first time. Obviously, overseas Filipinos are eagerly anticipating the elections and raring to vote.

The low absentee voter turnout in the 2007 mid-term elections was not surprising because the country’s top two posts were not at stake then. Next year, however, we expect (absentee) voter turnout to easily surpass the 64 percent (turnout) in the 2004 presidential polls.

We should urge overseas Filipinos not to give up their right to choose the country’s next leaders that sdoffer the greatest hope for real change.

Qualified overseas Filipinos have until August 31 to register as absentee voters. The new listing began on February 1. We have high hopes that by the August 31 deadline, a little over a million overseas Filipinos will have already registered as absentee voters.

There have been improvements in the absentee voting system, in terms of greater information dissemination and easier listing procedures based on lessons learned from past two elections.

As of June 3, a total of 92,175 overseas Filipinos had registered as absentee voters for the first time, bringing to 463,249 the total number of listed (absentee) voters. The total would have been higher, if not for the Commission on Elections’ decision to remove 132,820 absentee voters for failing to participate in the 2004 and 2007 polls.

In the 2004 presidential elections, a total of 364,187 overseas Filipinos were listed as absentee voters, but only 64 percent, or 233,092 actually voted. In the 2007 mid-term elections, a total of 503,894 overseas absentee voters were listed, but only 16 percent or 81,732 turned out to vote. –Ernesto F. Herrera, Manila Times

ernestboyherrera@yahoo.com