Fraud to be Filipino

The hot news these days is that somebody cheated a great deal in the 2004 national elections, at least according Sen. Panfilo Lacson, who is a former fugitive.

The proud-to-be-Filipino guys down here in my barangay, however, can hardly call the senator’s exposé as timely.

Still, all our eyes are on the Commission on Elections.

If all that massive cheating happened in the past, then it can always happen again. And again and again! It is as if election fraud is a way of life in this country.

In other words, just what is the Comelec doing? Comelec chair Sixto Brillantes Jr. has been saying all along that the Comelec must adopt some new rules against so-called post-election fraud.

In fact, the Comelec recently imposed new rules, under Resolution No. 9164, which try to prevent cheating in the canvassing and the counting of the votes, plus devise speedy and less costly ways to resolve election contests.

The guys down here know fully well that election contests have been the main money-making ventures of some ruthless personnel in the Comelec.

Thus, under the new rules initiated by Brillantes, in an election contest calling for a recount of the votes, the Comelec must go for the actual, physical recount of ballots—not just the so-called PCOS, or the precinct count optical scan.

Also, instead of the PCOS machines doing the authentication of ballots, the rules specify that the Comelec must now use UV lamps, which entail much lower costs.

As another measure to cut the cost of a recount, the Comelec will only check the ballots in 20 percent of the contested polling precincts.

If initial findings fail to justify a complete recount, the Comelec may dismiss the protest outright. Thus the body can prevent long and tedious harassment cases filed by losing candidates who have all the money in the world, probably also stolen from us.

Anyway, if the ballots are already damaged, making a recount impossible, the rules say that the Comelec shall print the “images” of the ballots stored in the memory cards of the counting machines.

Now, from what I gathered, shortly after the adoption of the new rules, the Comelec already finished nine major cases. That effective, in short!

Now, as a special request, the guys down here surely want this reform-minded Brillantes to deal with those crooked Comelec personnel. We are waiting.

Like it or not, because of the Lacson exposé, the Comelec is damaged goods. Brillantes will have to do a lot of repair work.

* * *

In the same burglarized House, some groups have railroaded the bill seeking to dismember the province of Camarines Sur.

House Bill No. 4728 proposes to create a new province by taking some 16 towns out of the existing CamSur. Surprise—the House approved the bill in record time, in just nine days, without even passing any of the House committees, much less going through plenary deliberations. Yes, such is possible in this country.

The principal author of the bill is Deputy Speaker Arnulfo Fuentebella, who also comes from CamSur, but whose term as representative of the province will expire in 2013. Aha!

Based on the flood of press releases coming from the Fuentebella camp, the main argument behind the move to split up CamSur is, er, “bad governance and graft.”

They all refer of course to the present administration of CamSur Gov. Luis Ray Villafuerte. I see. Never mind that, under the young multi-awarded Villafuerte, CamSur became the country’s top tourist destination, aside from posting the highest growth rate in rice production. Basta, bad management!

I am not sure that the answer to the supposed “bad governance” is to cut the province into pieces. There is no difference from the secessionist movement in Mindanao.

I thought that when government officials are bad and crooked and all that, we simply boot them out of office. The better option of course is to send them to jail, which never happens here, except for the man named Band …Wrist Band.

The thing is that the split will cost a ton of money—estimated at more than P1 billion!

Based on findings of the Center for Local and Regional Governance, a unit of the UP National College of Public Administration and Governance, CamSur will definitely suffer from the split. For one, it will have to share its supposed internal revenue allotment, or IRA, with the new province, to be called “Nueva Camarines.”

To make up for the cut in IRA, according to the UP study, CamSur may have to raise taxes and, worse, try to cut costs by dismissing employees and reducing the delivery of social services.

At the same time, the study also warned that residents of the new province (i.e. “Nueva Camarines”) would also get poor social services for the first three to five years of the transition period.

According to the UP study, the creation of Nueva Camarines will require P280 million at least. Well, “bare minimum” was the term it used. And that is just for the provincial capitol. On top of it, the new province is expected to rack up administrative costs of about P500 million a year.

Here is an interesting observation in another study funded by the German foundation Konrad Adenauer Stiftung: Splitting a province into two normally leads to “the creation of political dynasties and potentially will encourage little political tyrants in the countryside, whose only skill is winning the election but poorly lacking the ability to govern effectively.”

In short, “bad governance!” So what does the bill breaking up CamSur solve?

This month, by the way, CamSur will hold the 3rd Cobra Ironman, an annual competition among a thousand or so professional and amateur triathletes, all coming from 28 countries. It is an official qualifier to the Ironman Championship in Kona, Hawaii, and in Las Vegas, Nevada.

There—that’s bad management!