MANUEL L. Quezon III, who maintains the joint INQUIRER.net blog Current together with John Nery, gives a summary of past Philippine elections in his latest blog post.
Here’s an excerpt:
In a democracy, it’s the will of the majority that decides to vote, that counts.
The other interesting thing is, is it premature to write the obituary on the command vote? In 1998, I wrote that as far as presidential elections were concerned, the days of party machinery determining the outcome were over (the aberration would prove to be 2004: and that was a questionable election). This election marks 100 years since we’ve had lower house elections; and 66 years since the first national senatorial election. We are only a young democracy in terms of our personal memories.
I’ve put together a summary of the elections from 1907-2004, and it is in the context of all these past races that the present one should be considered. Please take a look (unfortunately, 1971 is a kind of “ghost year,” I’ve never been able to find the House results for that year, though we have the Senate results).
June 22nd, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Monday Lessons
Yup, we have a command vote alright. Why else would the religious groups endorse? Why else would political kingpins brag about clean sweep in some areas?
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clean sweep? ha ha ha. There is lots of people got kill. Do you call that clean honest election. Tell it to the marines!
May 22nd, 2007 at 12:25 am
Lets respect the will of the majority,lets not allow those “political pundits” cast doubts and dampen our hope for our country.
May 17th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
whom do you point? political dynasty or what?
to examine the will of the majority is but what is that to you? i thought all along that the voice of the people is the voice of God and is as sacred as religion.
but is it really the voice of the people or the modified voice of the rich families using the electorate for their own ends?
can we have really a genuine will of the people?
to think, every filipino has a right to vote be it educated nor not, be he/she with a handicap or not, as long as your of legal voting age then you can vote that’s how beautiful our democracy is.
but no one think of the unthinkable, that is manipulating the majority vote by any means, be it vote buying and/or coercion just to show and to prove that he/she is the dominant political head/figure.
their are more uneducated or underprivileged voters than intelligent voters nowadays and they can easily be bribed by their so-called political leaders. is that what you called fair, honest, democratic election results? is that reflective of the will of the people? i guess not!
so, whatever the outcome, there is no one to blame except you -> so, there will be more years of suffering, more years to think of going abroad seeking for opportunities of a lifetime wherein this government of ours can not provide.
May 17th, 2007 at 9:29 am
Yup, we have a command vote alright. Why else would the religious groups endorse? Why else would political kingpins brag about clean sweep in some areas?