The correct phrase is “bite the bullet.” But perhaps to underline her point that rampant vote-buying during Philippine elections is a direct result of the poverty afflicting the populace, especially in the countryside, Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting chair Henrietta de Villa employed a novel turn of phrase to describe the phenomenon: “Because of poverty, they are forced to buy the bullet.”
How rampant is rampant? The PPCRV itself said vote-buying this year was “bolder and on a bigger scale”—a claim that official police figures, at least, seem to belie. The Philippine National Police said it had recorded 59 vote-buying incidents nationwide within the official campaign period of the May 13 national and local polls. From Jan. 13 to May 13, 94 people have also been arrested, the money seized from them amounting to P1.164 million.
Of the 59 cases, 46 are now in the courts, while 13 incidents remain under investigation, the police said. And of the 94 persons arrested, 83 are now facing vote-buying charges. On Election Day itself, 14 arrests were reportedly made before the precincts closed at 7 p.m.
Against a landscape of tens of thousands of barangays nationwide and hundreds of candidates running, 59 cases and 14 Election Day arrests don’t seem to indicate that widespread a practice. And yet if reports over the media and online are to believed, vote-buying this year did not only grow more brazen, it has also mutated from the simple money-sample-ballot sandwich arrangement of elections past into a more sophisticated scheme.
The bribes are no longer confined to money but have also taken the form of groceries and food packs, gadgets such as mobile phones, and even education scholarships. Worse, they’re now handed out in the open—“Wala pong hiya, harap-harapan ang suhulan at bilihan, may bentahan pa raw,” said a PPCRV volunteer as quoted by De Villa.
As has been obvious all this time, the pertinent law isn’t deterring anyone. The Omnibus Election Code defines vote-buying as an election offense that involves “any person who gives, offers or promises money or anything of value, gives or promises any office or employment, franchise or grant, public or private, or makes or offers to make an expenditure, directly or indirectly … in order to induce anyone or the public in general to vote for or against any candidate or withhold his vote in the election, or to vote for or against any aspirant for the nomination or choice of a candidate in a convention or similar selection process of a political party.”
The penalty for violators is “imprisonment of not less than one year but not more than six years and shall not be subject to probation. In addition, the guilty party shall be sentenced to suffer disqualification to hold public office and deprivation of the right of suffrage.”
But, of the handful who are hauled in by the police for vote-buying, how many are actually prosecuted? Those who are caught doling money are typically the small fry—supporters and hangers-on made to serve as cannon fodder by being the frontline distributors of the largesse, while their candidate-masters stay in the background to retain plausible deniability.
How many of those actually responsible for green-lighting the vote-buying campaign, not to mention unloading the cash from their bank accounts, are charged in court along with their foot soldiers? Sen. Francis Pangilinan sees this inadequacy as the chief enabler of the practice. “No politician has ever been disqualified before Election Day because of vote-buying, and this is the reason it goes on unabated,” he said.
True—but De Villa is also right. Vote-buying exists because there are millions of impoverished people who see the money or the food packs and groceries offered to them as more important to their daily lives than a principled vote in yet one more election that, like every other election before it, will do pretty much nothing to improve their lot.
With the polls having become more and more carnivalesque exercises, it appears that the jaded masses have simply adapted to the prevailing cynicism by becoming more enterprising themselves—and the platitudes about voting wisely and well be damned.
Vote-buying persists because there has been no fundamental change in the conditions in the rural areas and among the urban poor. Elections are supposed to bring the change, but the poor among us have yet to see it.