Freespirit
The Best Democracy that Money Can Buy
This is a book written by Greg Palast, an American journalist who works for the Bristish Broadcasting Company (BBC). In the book he narrated his findings as to how George Bush beat Al Gore to become the President of United States. The writer focused on the results of the Florida Balloting and how a country who's electoral system that is said to be mature and sophisticated still lay prone to mechanical and methodical cheating.
The writer alleged that voting machines were re-calibrated in areas where Al Gore have higher approval rating and where illiteracy is also high thus rendering as already invalid those ballots entered into the machine with the slightest dents or marks.
He also alleged that the American Electoral Commission engaged an IT company to delete names of convicts in the list who no longer have the right to vote. And the company simply used probabilities in deleting the names without actually verifying because they happen to carry the same surname as a convicted felon. This resulted in massive disenfranchisement as it took a longer time to process the re-installation of the non-convicts into the roll of voters. The scheme also brought discomfort to those who were delisted as they have to prove they were not convicts at all. Of course, because of sophisticated intelligence, those delisted were likely to have voted for Gore.
Back home, we are not as techno-savvy in the way we vote. Our own Commission on Elections can well be a museum for all its Jurassic equipment. And even as homegrown politicians have mastered the art of vote buying in its various forms, there is still the Neanderthal form they employ like 'cow-herding'. So even in the way we buy democracy, we ran smack of sophistication. From the presidential to the SK polls, there is no letting up in the way political gurus sway the outcome of the elections to favor their protégées.
The saddest part of this all is the recently concluded SK elections. Because their elders could not leave them alone to learn the ropes of self governance, the new set of SK officers if they don't watch out will simply be a chip off the old block. It is political patronage not self governance that they are learning now and they are learning fast.
To play the game as tradition have it if only to get to the top is in itself a compromise. And the youth sector who is supposed to provide a fresh air of idealism in this political exercise gave it instead its last breath.
In the race for SK Federation president for instance, how many of those elected won on sheer merits?
Didn't some pay for the fees of their colleagues to assure their votes? Didn't some buy or promised cellphones to them once elected? How many were brought to Boracay or some other place under pretensions of an excursion when such trip was meant to confine them in a place out of reach of their rivals? It's like shooing the cattle in what tagalogs call "kural" so the rustlers won't snatch them. If this is not vote buying, I don't know what is!
Oh yes, our American political idols would certainly know what it is. It is indeed the best democracy that money can buy. So sad.