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All in
a Day's Work
By Michael Alan Hamlin
May 17, 2004
Last Monday, my wife and I expected, would be a day
of mostly rest. We planned to drive to her precinct early and be
there by 7:00 am. Every year since we've known each other this has
been our custom, with the objective of completing Monette's national
obligation first thing in the morning, so that we have the rest
of the day. Most of the time, ironically, it hasn't worked out that
way.
One year the teachers didn't show up at her precinct, so in her
customary fashion Monette took over their job, including organizing
other volunteers to help. Instead of being out of the precinct within
an hour of our arrival, as we'd expected, we finally got home around
5:00 am. She had manned the precinct until it closed, helped tabulate
the votes, escorted them to the Parañaque City Hall, and
then safeguarded them until they had been turned over in tact.
One particularly interesting moment in this process was the attempt
by an armed soldier to stop the bus in which Monette and the other
precinct volunteers were riding on the way to the City Hall. I was
trailing behind in my car, and when the soldier signaled the bus,
I got out and asked what the problem was. My wife tells me the sight
of a foreigner on a Parañaque backstreet at midnight startled
the soldier, and he waved the bus on. Who knows?
My wife was tense this year because she had not been able to find
her name on FindPrecinct.com. This was especially puzzling because
she had validated her registration last year. Being the positive
thinker I am, I assumed she'd find it at her usual precinct, and
we set off early in the morning with two of our household staff
who had also validated their registrations. But her name wasn't
on the list, and neither was the name of one of our staff. From
being tense, my wife now began to transition to slow simmer.
Someone in charge of the precinct told her to go to the BF precinct
to see if her name was there, since some names had been transferred.
We went, but again were disappointed. On the advice of precinct
officials in BF, we next set off for the local office of the Commission
on Elections (Comelec), and came across a state of pure pandemonium.
Angry citizens - mostly screaming insults hurled at Comelec - were
10 deep trying to retrieve authorization papers so they could vote.
Someone barricaded in the building was calling out names of individuals
whose names had been located.
When Monette asked how long people had been waiting, she was told
two hours. But then a neighbor happened by who said she had seen
my wife's name at the precinct we started out at in the morning.
Hoping somewhat irrationally that Monette's name had mysteriously
appeared on the lists after all - or she'd just missed it - we dashed
back to the precinct only to be disappointed yet again. Then it
was back to the Comelec office, where Monette learned definitively
that she was not on any list. In fact, she was told that many of
the validated names had been erased. No reason was given.
This is the first time my wife has missed voting. And she feels
robbed as a result, and that feeling is certainly justified, in
my view. Her day in many ways was symbolic of the chaos that reigned
nationwide, for which there were many reasons. Some of them have
to do with sheer incompetence if not criminal negligence by some
present and former Comelec officials. I'm sure you know the names.
The decision to junk electronic ballot casting in favor of an antiquated
manual system literally weeks before the election probably contributed
as well. Or was this part of some massive scheme to add the missing
voters' names to final tallies meant to artificially inflate the
results for some chosen candidate? The turtle-like pace of the so-called
quick count by the National Citizen's Movement for Free Elections
(Namfrel) acted like a spark in a dry forest amidst this speculation,
igniting waves of fearful conjecture that the election results were
indeed being manipulated.
In fact, I've seen no evidence that they were, although there are
plenty of political warlords boasting about how they delivered the
vote to favored candidates. Religious sect leaders like making these
boasts, too. But I've been observing elections in the Philippines
for a couple of decades, and I've never seen anything that would
convince me either politicians or religious leaders have anywhere
near the clout they claim.
As the count dragged on and my wife continued to mourn her lost
right to vote, a friend said of the episode, "It's flabbergasting,
and made to look even sillier by the Indians, who managed to count
all their 250 million votes in about a day." That's a sobering
thought, indeed. If the Indians can count 250 million that quickly,
shouldn't the Philippines be able to count less than a fifth as
many within that time?
Whatever the reasons my wife and thousands of others were denied
an inherent privilege, it's truly important not to let it happen
again. Elections do need to be modernized, and hopefully whoever
wins this one will make sure his or her successor is elected properly,
and not just properly elected.
(Michael Alan Hamlin is the managing
director of consultancy TeamAsia and the author of three books on
Asian economies and companies. His latest book is Marketing Asian
Places, of which he is a co-author (Wiley, 2001), and he is currently
at work on High Visibility: The Making and Marketing of Asian Professionals
into Celebrities. Write him at mahamlin@teamasia.com.).
Copyright © 2003 Michael Alan
Hamlin. All Rights Reserved.
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