by _Kuroi_
Hello. So I’ve been in Philippines for like 4,5 months and I was kind of following this whole election thing. Now, if you’re not interested in reading this thing, you can go fap or do whatever else you like and then enjoy your sleep. Another point, I don’t really ‘endorse’ any of your candidates but there is one candidate that I’m pretty sure will bring a disaster to your country.
Please read the whole thing before commenting.
Whoever gets elected, this country will likely see no positive change
(and I believe with if Duterte gets elected it will see negative change in most aspects, like economy, diplomacy, law and so on)
The reason I say is simple – Filipino seem to have a belief like “I will vote for president, vice-president, congresmen, mayor, etc and then will go drink Tanduay, eat my burned meat and wait for them to change the country. My responsibility as a citizen is over”. You seem to be very dependent on people you elect. This is quite sad. And wrong.
If you just leave it up to your representatives (which do not always represent majority. I will explain later), they have no one to control them. It’s really easy to get drunk on power as well as get into corruption schemes. When the system is corrupted, it will swallow any smaller object (say newly elected, honest, representative who genuinely wants to change something for better) by either pressuring him into becoming corrupt or ejecting him from the system (fabricated cases, black PR and so on). It is sad reality and it happens in any country.
So, think about it, with no one to watch over you, you can have lots of money/abuse your position and get away with it. Would you do it? Most of you believe you wouldn’t, but you would. Because the pressure of the system over you would be overwhelming. Only small percentage of people who believe they wouldn’t, actually wouldn’t do it.
How to solve this?
- Establish control over your government. Via conducting journalistic investigation and exposing corruption schemes to public. Push for investigations on alleged corrupt people. Push adequate imprisonment for people who’re corrupt or abuse their power. You have instrument to you available, called peaceful demonstration/protest/rally. Use it.
- Help your government. Create NGOs, develop strategies, web-sites, applications to make things more efficient and less corrupt and more transparent. Force the government to apply these practices. Examples would be more effective use of funds, presentations on practices in different countries while accounting for realities of Philippines, for say, traffic, internet, protection of environment, etc. – Change of the country starts with you. Don’t like trash on the streets? Stop throwing away your shit in the middle of street. Don’t like smell of piss in the middle of central street of your city? Don’t do it yourself and peacefully discourage anyone you notice doing it. Pushing for a fine for doing might be a good idea as well. Organize your neighbors into a group to say clean your neighborhood say once a week, on Saturday. Or gather money from everyone to repair something within your neighborhood or say install playground for kids. It doesn’t have to be limited by your neighborhood but that’s a good start.
In conclusion of this thesis – your responsibility doesn’t end with just casting your vote. After all, if you don’t help yourself, no one will. No one will bring the change you crave for unless you yourself work on bringing it yourself as well.
Your voting system is heavily flawed
Whoever gets elected for say, president, will only represent about 30% of population (according to current surveys). This means, another 2/3 (which is a majority btw) of population doesn’t want them as a president. This is not right. I think your system should changed to 2 round system. For example, for a president elections, if in the first round, if no one gets 50%+1 vote (in other words, majority of a population), second round is conducted between 2 candidates, who got the most support in round one. Whoever gets majority of the votes in 2nd round becomes a president. Might also want to place some safety measures, like if turn out is less than N% (say 60%) of a population, elections are considered void and are held again. This can also apply to vice presidential elections as well as mayors of bigger cities (like cities with population over 100k for example).
Another thing, which really discourages people from voting is that you have to get up your butt and go register as a voter or you have to go re-activate your ability to vote if you haven’t voted for a while. A lot of people are lazy or too busy or are simply unable to do that for whatever reason. This way, quite a big chuck of population is excluded from the voting process. I think something like what we have in Ukraine would work here. When you reach a certain age (either 16 or 18, I don’t really remember) and become eligible for voting, you’re automatically registered as a voter. That’s it, no action required. Some time before elections, at which you are supposed to vote, you will receive a personal invitation, which will state your full name, where you’re supposed to go to vote, when and for what. It also states where you should go to have mistakes fixed if there are any. Then at the designated day, you go to a mentioned place (you’re designated to a closest one to your registered place of residence), present document to identify yourself, get your ballots and vote, that’s it.
Some laws regulating propaganda posters, these cars riding around and annoying people with shitty jingles and ads played on equally shitty speaker, prohibiting use of administrative resource for campaigns is probably a good idea as well.
Conclusion: push for (via rallies, your representatives in congress or any other means) for a system that will allow for a better representation of population’s opinion.
A lot of voters are hardly educated and very hypocritical
This is sad reality. People crave for a change, I can see why and I can’t really blame them. Thing is, a lot of voters can’t see past the point of wanting that change. They don’t seem to care how it’s done or even if it can be done. They don’t really check their facts or credibility of sources, they blindly believe articles on the internet or advertisements on TV or any other form of propaganda. On top of that, they will furiously defend things they saw in this stuff, without having any reasons to believe it’s true to begin with. People believe in empty promises, without even knowing/thinking if those promises can be kept (this is especially true for Duterte supportres). They also don’t seem to look into the root of the problem and just think that certain action will solve all problems (for example, Duterte’s war on crime/drugs)
As for hypocrisy, it mostly concerns your religion. I have never seen so much religions stuff anywhere, icons, bible quotations, statues, shirts about Jesus, religious drawings, etc. They’re everywhere. People advertise that they’re religious, believe in god and so on. And then? They either go do something that completely contradicts their ‘believes’ or go support a candidate whose actions and words contradict everything their ‘believes’ stand for.
Solution? Imo lies with more conscious people. They should make an effort to educate these people who know or care less. Indulge into a peaceful and meaningful discussion with your peers, trying to tell them why you think their candidate is bad and your is a better choice, but don’t forget to also listen to their opinion, because there’s no guarantee that you’re the one who’s correct. Just don’t be like some hardcore fans of Duterte, which seem to have a mindset akin to “All that lives must die”, or more like “All that’s against our one true glorious leader must die”. If you want your opinion be heard, don’t forget to listen to opinions of others.
All your candidates suck
This is, of course, just my opinion, but your choice of presidential candidates is rather poor. In a nutshell it’s like:
- an inexperienced puppet
- a crazy guy who thinks he can fix everything with violence, because he probably knows no other way. He doesn’t seem to understand what he can and what he can’t do as president either. Don’t seem to think before he says something and doesn’t really admits his mistakes (to tell you truth, I have no idea how they even allowed him to run without investigating his claims about killing people and all that DDS business. Same goes for the next guy)
- a corrupt guy who probably just wants to stay in power to steal more / retain his immunity to avoid being held responsible for the stuff he did before
- an old lady who’d probably be a good choice if not for her [poor] choice of VP and possible death in a short term perspective
- a hypocritical guy who tries to make it look like he understands simple people and utterly fails cause he’s obviously from a different tier of society.
But they all have something in common – they all promise, and promise and then promise more but none of them seem to have an actual, real plan of actions they will take to keep their promises should they become a president.
Honestly, at least 2 of VP candidates look like they’d be much more competent and better president than any of actual presidential candidates.
What can you do about it? Honestly, not much this time around. As it stands, these elections are more about selecting least evil out of 5, thus not allowing biggest evil to completely fuck up your country, making its situation even worse. In the future? I guess, pushing for better screening during registration of candidates for whatever voted position to weed out candidates that are not fit. As well as encouraging and supporting people who actually want to change something for better and have a concrete plan on how to bring said change about and not just empty promises of happy life after you elect them.
Whom would I vote if I had a chance to vote?
I’m often asked this question by [local] people I discuss your elections with. Out of current tandems? No one. If I don’t take tandems into account? I’d say Miriam + Trillanes would be the combo that theoretically could bring at least some positive changes to your country. Miriam because her platform mostly seems to be more or less focused (in my opinion at least) on things that need immediate attention. Trillanes because he handled himself the best in th debates while giving concrete and realistic solutions to the problems mentioned in questions.
Bonus: Comelec
Most of you here know what happened, but that’s not the case with most of population sadly. A lot of people simply don’t realize how much Comelec fucked up with this leak and what consequences it can have for them personally thus there is not much of pressure over Comelec to fire executives, hold “developers” responsible for this shit accountable and have full audit of the system to find and patch any remaining vulnerabilities (which, after examining dump and reading on how apparently it was done, I’m inclined to believe are present). People not realizing magnitude of what has happened is also the reason why no one / hardly anyone tries to sue Comelec for failing to protect your sensitive data and exposing you to identity theft and other dangers caused by personal information and voting records being out in the wild. The leak is huge but luckily for you, that website only contains a small fraction of data available in the dump.
Also,food for thought: I’d really doubt protection of these voting machines from possibly being rigged to manipulate votes in favor of someone, seeing that poorly designed DB and how it was done and how Comelec handles this whole situation.
Don’t forget, this is just my opinion. If you disagree, that’s fine. Let me know why you disagree. I’m interested in hearing your arguments.
And let’s have a civilized discussion. And I you to research your candidates and what they’re promising to do and make a responsible, well thought through choice on the day of elections.