Cardema must not be

allowed to invoke
separate rule for himself
(Partylist System)
05:01 AM May 27, 2019

I read with keen interest the recent tweet of Sen. Panfilo Lacson who said that former National
Youth Commission (NYC) chair Ronald Cardema and his party list are “just two of many reasons
why the party list system has become a joke.”

Indeed, Cardema’s stunt is just one of the latest of a series of acts committed by politicians to
further taint, weaken and distort what was intended to be a system that would level the playing
field between the traditional, well-heeled politicians and nontraditional leaders of the so-called
marginalized and underrepresented sectors.

The prostitution of the system has been unbridled and has become a way of our political life,
such that we no longer raise a serious howl when scions of seasoned politicians and billionaire-
businessmen who can easily run and wage decent electoral battles in their respective
congressional districts would opt to be nominees under the party list to represent their chosen
sectors such as, much to our chagrin, the security guards, tricycle drivers or athletes, among
others.

The party list system and the laws and rules governing it have been circumvented many times
over by various interest groups and individuals to suit their political and personal ends, that it no
longer comes as a surprise to many that even some of the present breed of our youth leaders
would follow suit and adopt the same subterfuge pioneered by their senior and more seasoned
counterparts.

In the case of Cardema, while much has been said about his possible disqualification as a
substitute for any of the original nominees of his party (who reportedly withdrew their
nominations at the 11th hour) on account of his age as well as the timeliness of his action for
substitution, we think that the real ground for his disqualification rests on his being an appointed
public official from the start of the day of the filing of the certificates of candidacy (CoC) in
October 2018 up to the eve of election day.

The law is very clear that a person holding a public position who files his CoC is considered ipso
facto resigned from the office and must vacate the same at the start of the day of the filing of the
CoC. This means that a candidate for an elective post must not at the same time be occupying an
appointive position in government.
By analogy, a person intending to subsequently substitute an original candidate or nominee is
himself a candidate or nominee who must possess the same qualifications and none of the
disqualifications for the post for which he is being nominated as a substitute “at the time of the
filing of the CoC” (save for the age requirement which must be reckoned as of election day).

Thus, a substitute candidate or nominee must also be bound by the rule that he must not be
holding any appointive office at the time the person whom he is substituting filed his certificate.
He cannot and must not be allowed to invoke a separate rule for himself.

If the party list nominee is proscribed from being such without relinquishing his appointive post
at the time he files his certificate, it follows that his substitute must also not be holding any
appointive position from that period up to at least the day of the elections. This is squarely in
consonance with the legal doctrine that “what cannot be legally done directly cannot be done
indirectly.”

Cardema evidently failed to comply with that legal requirement.

Give poll teachers their

due
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:14 AM May 23, 2019

The votes have been counted and the winners of the midterm elections proclaimed, but the
thousands of tireless public school teachers who manned the polls, most of whom went over and
beyond their call of duty, have yet to get their rightful due. Again.

The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) said Election Day saw “no realization” of the
Commission on Elections’ (Comelec) promise that the 526,686 teachers and Department of
Education (DepEd) personnel deputized to be at the voting frontlines would get their allowances
and honorariums upon submission of election returns.

Teachers were instead forced to troop to local Comelec offices in the succeeding days, the
teachers group said, requiring additional effort and transportation expenses just to claim their
rightful compensation of P6,000 for the election board chair, P5,000 for board members, P4,000
for the DepEd supervising officer and P2,000 for the support staff, plus P1,000 travel allowance.
As of early this week, less than 10 percent of teachers who had rendered election duty have
received their honorariums, although Comelec said it had 15 days to pay everyone.

A case can be made for giving the teachers and DepEd personnel even more, considering what
they had to put up with in the face of the most glitch-ridden elections since the switch to the
automated system in 2010.

The DepEd’s Election Task Force said it received 131,526 reports from teachers on the field,
ranging from multiple issues with the transmission of data, vote-counting machines (VCMs) and
the final testing of the automated voting equipment, to damage to school facilities, and instances
of injury and harassment in the line of duty.

The unheralded teachers and DepEd personnel also had to endure the oppressive heat and the
frustration of harried voters. Many had to skip meals and bathroom breaks to serve the thousands
of voters lined up before the closing of the polls. At times, they even had to become instant
information technology experts in an attempt to get faulty VCMs back in operation, said ACT.
“Not only did they have to be resourceful in troubleshooting the machines and in exhausting all
possible means to ensure that the voting process continues immediately, but they also had to
endure voters’ irk and disappointment in the resulting chaos and long lines in polling precincts,”
lamented ACT national chair Joselyn Martinez.

And, because of the snail-paced transmission of results from 6 a.m. of May 14 and glitches that
affected more than 6,000 clustered precincts, electoral board members and technical staff had to
render inordinately extended election duty. It estimated that over 10,000 such workers have
rendered more than 24 hours of continuous service since May 13.
Still, the teachers have no time to rest and recuperate, as this week marks the beginning of
DepEd’s Brigada Eskwela, to be followed by further training and then the opening of the new
school year.

Incredibly, on top of all these is yet another aggravation: The paltry and belated allowance and
honorariums due these frontliners is still subject to income tax. Even the lowest-ranking public
school teacher is paid above the tax-free threshold of P250,000 a year, thus the Comelec’s
declaration of tax exemptions for those earning below the threshold “does not make sense,”
noted 1-Ang Edukasyon party list.

Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian has urged the Bureau of Internal Revenue to scrap the tax. “Giving our
teachers the full amount of their election honorariums and allowances is the best way we can
show them our gratitude and appreciation for ensuring clean, honest and orderly elections in the
country,” he said.

Indeed. Earlier, Gatchalian had also asked the Comelec to prepare in advance the allowances and
honorariums to be given to the DepEd personnel, to head off complaints about delays and
complications in their release. “Our teachers’ jobs during the elections are stressful enough as it
is; let us not add to their burden by denying what is rightfully due them,” he reminded the poll
body prior to the May 13 elections.
That sensible suggestion apparently fell on deaf ears, because the same litany of woes afflicting
harried public school teachers every election period is rending the air yet again. It’s about time
the Comelec and the rest of the government looked at how to repay teachers conscripted for
indispensable election duties in a more honorable, less callous way.

Comelec must explain

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) had one job to do in 2019: ensure the conduct of “free,
orderly, honest and credible” midterm national elections. Was it up to the job? Four days before
May 13, Comelec chair Sheriff Abas confidently declared, “Reding-ready na kami for Monday
(We’re ready for Monday),” as he led an inspection of the canvassing center at the Philippine
International Convention Center.

Election Day quickly belied that claim. Nearly a week after the close of the Monday polls, the
full extent of the glitches and aberrations that marred the elections remains to be tallied, but the
numbers so far hardly inspire sentiments in the Comelec’s favor. The commission had three years
to prepare for this exercise, and this was already the fourth automated election it was conducting.
The job should have become easier, more efficient and more orderly, let alone transparent. But
Monday’s proceedings turned out to be anything but.

Polling was delayed in many precincts, first of all, as 961 out of the 85,000 vote-counting
machines (VCMs) “experienced issues.” Up to 600 VCMs had to be replaced outright by the
early afternoon of May 13. According to the Department of Education, teachers who manned the
polls reported an even higher number of malfunctioning machines: 1,333. Also, 1,665 SD cards
that contained the data fed into the VCMs “suffered glitches.”

The Comelec downplayed the incidents by pointing out that they affected only 1.1 percent of the
85,000 VCMs and 1.9 percent of the SD cards. Still, Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez had
to concede that the numbers were “jarring,” considering that in the 2016 presidential election,
only 801 VCMs and 120 SD cards malfunctioned. The number of defective VCMs this time
around was reportedly three times higher compared to the last polls—a bewildering 220 percent
more.

There were also complaints about pre-shaded ballots, ballot receipts that came out wrong
(bearing names of candidates the voters hadn’t shaded), the lack of marking pens, problems with
the transmission of results.

But easily the most glaring and unprecedented aberration was the seven-hour delay in the release
of partial election results to the poll watchdogs and the media.

At 6:15 p.m., just 0.38 percent of the unofficial election results had been transmitted from the
Comelec transparency servers, before the data fell silent for an agonizingly long seven hours.
The next transmission came at 1:19 a.m. the next day, apparently in one big dump as the partial
and unofficial count zoomed to 90.57 percent of the clustered precincts. But, at 6:19 a.m. of May
14, came another glitch: The tally suddenly fell from 92.89 percent to 49.76 percent.
The Comelec attributed the massive lag in transmission to a malfunction in the data packets from
the poll body’s transparency server, with the assurance that data from the polling precincts
nationwide had continued to stream in during the interval but were only failing to appear in real
time due to the technical glitch. As for the sudden drop in the tally on May 14, the cause was
“java error.”

The transparency server mess inevitably raised speculations and questions about the credibility
of the data. The citizen arm Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting and the Kapisanan ng
mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas are among the groups demanding, “in the spirit of transparency,”
that the Comelec provide the public a comprehensive account of the server’s problems. The
Senate is also making noise about looking into the issue, with Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III, who
chairs the joint congressional oversight committee on the automated elections, asking: “Why are
we still having all these glitches? Cannot Comelec anticipate them?”

The public wonders likewise. At this point, while there appears to be popular acceptance of the
general outcome of the polls, the conduct of the exercise itself, clearly riddled with irregularities
and technical snafus, remains very much a point of concern that cries out for exhaustive audit
and inquiry. Voters of whatever political stripe have every right to feel incensed, and incredulous,
at the Comelec’s foul-ups, the lot of which appears to be the result of glaringly inadequate
preparation and lack of foresight.

Such egregious shortcomings are a failing mark for which the Comelec owes the people an
apology. No, it owes them more than that—an unvarnished, no-bullshit explanation for how this
debacle came to pass.

Election blues
How, in this fragile democracy, could it happen that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) was
unable to transmit voting results on its transparency server for seven hours on the night of
Election Day?

The question continues to rankle despite the official belated explanation, thus exacerbating the
occurrence of snafus that modern societies on the planet would deem unthinkable and
unacceptable in any electoral exercise.

It was bad enough that, earlier on, the Comelec appeared at a loss to command the situation, or,
if it did, ruled questionably on critical matters, such as patent premature campaigning, or the run
of spouses to represent two adjacent districts in the House of Representatives, or the scandalous
designation of the Nacionalista Party, which is allied with the ruling PDP-Laban, as the minority
party.
In the May 13 midterm elections, despite the passage of three years after the 2016 presidential
election, and with billions of pesos at its disposal to act on problems or avert looming ones, the
Comelec was again confronted with the goblins of Philippine elections: assassinations (although
the number is said to have been considerably lessened) and other acts of violence by armed men,
as well as vote-buying — what should have been, like measles or malaria, plagues of the past.

On top of the seven-hour period when the Comelec’s transparency server transmitted nothing to
watchdog organizations and the media — inevitably throwing suspicion at the rout of the
opposition slate — glitches have been added to Philippine elections’ guns, goons and gold.
As many as 961 out of 85,000 vote-counting machines (VMCs) and 1,165 secure digital (SD)
cards “experienced issues,” lamented Commissioner Rowena Guanzon.

These kinks in what should by now be a smooth voting process provoked National Citizens’
Movement for Free Elections secretary general Eric Alvia to wonder aloud on TV: How many
votes were compromised with the transmission of voting data hampered by defective VCMs and
SD cards?

And, as though to indicate how far we’ve sunk as a nation, vote-buying reached new highs on the
run-up to the midterm polls and on Election Day itself.

The widespread commission of the election offense, as reflected in the 441 reported
apprehensions made by police in Metro Manila and other regions nationwide, was remarkable,
highlighted by such anecdotal data as a rural bank running out of bank notes; staple wires and
brown envelopes in short supply; and the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program serving as
distribution base.

It’s a disgrace, mirroring the extent to which candidates for public office would go to gain votes
and the apparently infinite ways they can get their money back and more. It mirrors as well the
level of need of the destitute — and in fact even those whose existence is hardly hand-to-mouth.
That it’s rooted in the culture is too facile an observation; that it seems much worse than before,
as has been claimed, shows a disheartening spike in the malady of corruption.

Incredibly, vote-buying was encouraged by no less than President Duterte as he spoke at the
campaign rally of the administration’s Hugpong ng Pagbabago on Friday night, in the process
assailing the Comelec for its “unrealistic” regulations against politicians doling anything of
value, in cash or in kind, during a campaign.

How, in this fragile democracy, could it happen that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) was
unable to transmit voting results on its transparency server for seven hours on the night of
Election Day?

The question continues to rankle despite the official belated explanation, thus exacerbating the
occurrence of snafus that modern societies on the planet would deem unthinkable and
unacceptable in any electoral exercise.
It was bad enough that, earlier on, the Comelec appeared at a loss to command the situation, or,
if it did, ruled questionably on critical matters, such as patent premature campaigning, or the run
of spouses to represent two adjacent districts in the House of Representatives, or the scandalous
designation of the Nacionalista Party, which is allied with the ruling PDP-Laban, as the minority
party.

In the May 13 midterm elections, despite the passage of three years after the 2016 presidential
election, and with billions of pesos at its disposal to act on problems or avert looming ones, the
Comelec was again confronted with the goblins of Philippine elections: assassinations (although
the number is said to have been considerably lessened) and other acts of violence by armed men,
as well as vote-buying — what should have been, like measles or malaria, plagues of the past.
On top of the seven-hour period when the Comelec’s transparency server transmitted nothing to
watchdog organizations and the media — inevitably throwing suspicion at the rout of the
opposition slate — glitches have been added to Philippine elections’ guns, goons and gold.

As many as 961 out of 85,000 vote-counting machines (VMCs) and 1,165 secure digital (SD)
cards “experienced issues,” lamented Commissioner Rowena Guanzon.

These kinks in what should by now be a smooth voting process provoked National Citizens’
Movement for Free Elections secretary general Eric Alvia to wonder aloud on TV: How many
votes were compromised with the transmission of voting data hampered by defective VCMs and
SD cards?

And, as though to indicate how far we’ve sunk as a nation, vote-buying reached new highs on the
run-up to the midterm polls and on Election Day itself.

The widespread commission of the election offense, as reflected in the 441 reported
apprehensions made by police in Metro Manila and other regions nationwide, was remarkable,
highlighted by such anecdotal data as a rural bank running out of bank notes; staple wires and
brown envelopes in short supply; and the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program serving as
distribution base.

It’s a disgrace, mirroring the extent to which candidates for public office would go to gain votes
and the apparently infinite ways they can get their money back and more. It mirrors as well the
level of need of the destitute — and in fact even those whose existence is hardly hand-to-mouth.
That it’s rooted in the culture is too facile an observation; that it seems much worse than before,
as has been claimed, shows a disheartening spike in the malady of corruption.

Incredibly, vote-buying was encouraged by no less than President Duterte as he spoke at the
campaign rally of the administration’s Hugpong ng Pagbabago on Friday night, in the process
assailing the Comelec for its “unrealistic” regulations against politicians doling anything of
value, in cash or in kind, during a campaign.

In the event they were accosted by authorities, he was quoted as saying, Hugpong supporters
should “just tell them you took the money, not for the vote, but because you want your fare to get
home.” In subsequent remarks, the President said vote-buying had become the norm, that it was
“integral” to elections in this country.

Under the Omnibus Election Code that the Comelec and law enforcement agencies are mandated
to enforce, the punishment for vote-buying is imprisonment of one to five years. Any political
party found guilty of vote-buying should pay a fine of not less than P10,000.

The amounts used to buy votes reportedly ranged from P200 to P2,000. Some P2 million has
been recovered in antivote-buying operations, according to Philippine National Police Gen.
Oscar Albayalde.

In Malacañang, Mr. Duterte’s mouthpiece Salvador Panelo conceded that vote-buying was
“definitely” against the law, but added that if one were only being given pamasahe, “that’s OK.”
It’s of a piece with the declaration of Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte, who served as campaign
manager of the victorious administration slate, that honesty is not an issue in the elections.