
12 People's Criteria to choose the Next President
Philippines, April 15th 2010 – As the May 10th elections approaches with less than a month to spare, here are a few things you need to know:
1. 12 – People’s Criteria to choose the next president
Pagbabago! and Ibon Foundation dare the Filipino people to be more critical in choosing their candidates. high on their “people’s criteria” are concrete steps by the presidential candidate to stamp out corruption and to promote human rights and abuses.
1. On Corruption. Will they seek the truth behind the “Hello, Garci”, NBN-ZTE and fertilizer scam to name a few of the anomalies that involved the president?
2. Human rights. Will they end the policies giving rise to human rights violations?
3. National Patrimony. Will they protect the national patrimony and environment by opposing large-scale, export oriented, and foreign led extractive industries such as mining and oil exploration?
4. Agrarian Reform and agricultural Development. Will they work for genuine agrarian reform anchored on the Distribution of land to the tillers?
5. Nationalist Economic Policies. Will they work for national industrilization?
6. Jobs and wages. Will they promote job creation and uphold job security by protecting domestic industry?
7. Social Services. Will they stop the commercialization and privatization of education and health services?
8. Taxes. Are they in favor of scrapping the reformed value added tax (RVAT) and other regressive taxes?
9. Foreign Policy. WIll they work for an independent foreign policy?
10. Peace Process. Will they pursue the peace talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the national Democratic Front of the Philippines?
11. Gender. Will they uphold gender equality?
12. National Culture. Will they promote National Culture?
2. Election Frauds
The COMELEC (Commission on Elections) has decided to push through for the Automated Elections System (AES) using Precinct count optical scanner Machines from Smartmatic (S-PCOS). The COMELEC sees poll automation as the answer to fraud and a step to “modernizing democracy.” Although this is not a bad idea, giving the elections added advantages such as speed and accuracy in tabulation, it can still lead to wholesale cheating if safeguards and security measures are not properly implemented especially in the counting and canvassing stages.
According to Project 30-30, a project that refers to the Philippine automated election system’s 30 Vulnerabilities or risks and 30 safeguards identified by CenPEG (Center for People’s Empowerment in Governance), “The automated Election Law (Republic Act 9369) is a landmark legislation aimed at modernizing the election system in the Philippines. Not only does it recognize the need for technology chosen to be “suitable to Philippine conditions”, it is also unique in that it provides major safeguards to help ensure the integrity of the vote, promote secret voting yet transparent and credible counting in the poll automation – in short, to make election a mechanism for making democracy work.” Read the rest of this entry »