May 10 Elections Already a Failure

Post date: Apr 4, 2010 7:21:43 PM

(Credit: Larry Pickering, Cartoonist)

PRESS RELEASE

March 26, 2010

By Manny Valdehuesa

With the exclusion of Ang Kapatiran Party candidates in debates sponsored or covered by broadcast media, one would have to be cynical or downright corrupt to expect or even to think that the May 10 elections will be honest, open, free, fair, accurate, or conducted on a level playing field. The traditional parties and their candidates have stacked the cards against any party or candidate running on a platform of reform.

With generous assistance from the media, particularly ABS-CBN, and by indulgence of the COMELEC and even the High Court, the trapo parties and candidates have violated every conceivable canon of democratic politics.

They started their campaigns way in advance of the date for filing of candidacy and long before the official campaign period. They launched extravagant gimmicks to proclaim their intention to seize power at all cost. They overspent on media advertising while incumbent reelectionists raided the public treasury and feasted on the pork barrel shamelessly.

Not least, they debated among themselves to the exclusion of other legitimate parties and candidates. The Ang Kapatiran Party was not invited. If they were half decent believers in democracy, they would have refrained from discriminatory practices on the hustings. But with bravado typical of the power-greedy, they flaunted election laws as well as norms of civilized conduct and went into a frenzy of premature, illegal, improper campaigning.

Unless open, free, and fair to all accredited candidates, can an election be honest? Unless every accredited candidate has a chance to present himself and his program, how is it a level playing field?

The fact is, the elections are already a failure as of this date. Democracy has been dealt a severe blow. A cloud of illegitimacy will haunt whoever is proclaimed after May 10. How then shall the nation cope with instability?

MANUEL “Manny” VALDEHUESA

ANG KAPATIRAN PARTY