Editorial
A long way to go
The counting isn’t over, but this much we know now of the 2013 midterm elections: We didn’t know that much.
The counting isn’t over, but this much we know now of the 2013 midterm elections: We didn’t know that much.
The campaign for the midterm elections on May 13 under the Aquino administration opened Tuesday with the proclamation of candidates for 12 positions in the Senate by two major contending coalitions—the administration’s Liberal Party ticket and the lineup of the opposition United Nationalist Alliance (UNA).
The fates of two people reveal a great deal about the nature of Philippine elections in particular and politics in general.
I write in response to the Feb. 2 Inquirer editorial (“Dynastic hubris”). I wish to highlight key points about Bam Aquino’s qualifications that make him fit to run for higher office.
It’s either PCOS (precinct count optical scan) machines or manual polls, says Commission on Elections Chair Sixto Brillantes, in his latest challenge to critics who continue to question the poll body’s capability to conduct automated elections this year. Brillantes had declared the mock elections the Comelec held last week in 20 voting centers in 10 areas nationwide a success, but many IT groups and citizen watchdogs are not mollified, citing the many troubling glitches and last-minute emergencies that marred the exercise.
What’s in a name? It can make you win or lose an election, said two senatorial candidates at the Kapihan sa Manila at the Diamond Hotel last Monday.
Oh no, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) will go ahead with its bullheaded plan to “repair” the whole length of Edsa before alternate routes are found for the thousands of vehicles that will be displaced from Edsa because of the repair work. The repairs will take two years, which means Edsa will be hell on earth for at least two years. The DPWH has been able to convince Metro Manila mayors to agree to the massive repairs, and some people have already voiced their suspicions of the reasons the mayors were persuaded.
We wish to emphasize that Vice President Jejomar C. Binay is supporting exclusively the candidates of the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) in the 2013 elections.
President Aquino appears uncertain of his clout in winning control of an ungovernable Senate in the 2013 midterm elections as he faces a grass-roots backlash from the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy over the passage in Congress of the controversial reproductive health (RH) bill.
Commission on Elections Chair Sixto Brillantes and his commissioners should be commended by a grateful nation for trying to cleanse the party-list system. They have disqualified many sitting representatives of party-list groups and many groups themselves. They have discovered that only five of the sitting representatives of party-list groups are not millionaires. Many more don’t actually belong to the marginalized sectors these groups are supposed to represent.
We witness today the suicide of party politics as a tool for transforming the political understanding of people towards democratic maturity.
