Pinoy Elections..... CrAzy Times!!!

And there I am again... Looking at the screen which is my contact line with the rest of the world, a world seems further away from me every day... The screen is still white.. But my mind is flooded with words and sentences, it's boiling, so many things I would like to release, I would like to scream about...

But we take a breath... I dont want to spill out everything at once.. :)

My research has begun! The last days I have been going to communities to interview the farmers.. But still its not really a rocket-start, since everyone, even in the smallest rural communities, is completely captured by the excillerating, drama-soap-detective-horror wonder world of the Philippino ELECTIONS!

Even for the most political ignorant ostrich its impossible to let this spectacle go by unnoticed.. Campaigners go through extremes to promote themselves: every corner of the street is literally covered with posters flyers and sacks proclamating the names of the eleged politicians. It doesnt matter how far you go into the mountains, you will find promissing slogans and slick smiling faces hanging everywhere.

Beside the roosters that like to hold raging discussions around 5 am in the morning, around that time the recoridas start their tours around the towns. Recoridas are vehicles (read: anything on wheels) with a loudspeaker on top, driving aroud the whole day playing jingles of the nominated candidates. Theres even a version made on Black eyed Peas' "My humps" (Lets not forget that Karaoke is the countries favorite leasure time activity).

The 14th of may will be decisive and I am anxiously wondering how the world here will look like the day after.

But.. the Philippines would not be the Philippines if there wouldnt be a twist to the idea of ELECTIONS.. and DEMOCRACY.

Let me try to give you a small introductions on how the system goes here. The 14th of May the people are allowed to vote for the all the seats in the House of Representatives and half the seats of the Senators.

To nominate yourself to be elected as congressman or senetor you will have to pass the selection of the commitee of elections. Which basically means they will check your bankaccount to see if you have enough money. If you can not proove you have sufficient financial means, you will not get through the selection. This is a perfect tool to keep the power in the hands of the ruling elite.

About a decade ago, the government decided (after alot of pressure of the movements) to give the marginalized groups in the society a chance to represent themselves. This is implemented by the Partylist system: of the 250 seats in the parliament, 50 seats (yes.. a democratic 20 percent) are available for partylist candidates. (The other 80 percent of the seats are therefor for the ruling big families who have enough money to run for Congresman or Senator)

Of these 50 seats which are available for 'normal' parties, every party is only alowed to have a maximum of 3 seats. So if you form a party (lets say as we have in Holland the Party for the Animals ;)), you run for the Partylist, and even if you become tremendously popular and more than 50 percent (2 percent = 1 seat) of the population votes for you, you will still only get 3 seats.

Another 'funny' thing is that not only opposition parties are allowed to run for the Partylist seats (as you may think seeing that already 80 percent of the seats are ruled by the elite), there are about 90 parties (many of them government sponsored and 'empty' parties) running for the 50 partylist seats. If you calculate; with so many parties running, and every party having a minimum of 2 percent of the population for 1 seat and a maximum of 6 seats, many parties dont get enough votes to fill a seat; all the votes are spread out over the 90 parties. During the last elections in 2004, only 15 of the available 50 seats for partylist were eventually filled.

Hurray for Democracy!

I hope you are still folowing me... It took me quite a while to understand it too..

So for a great shift of power or a peoples movement overtake we shouldnt be looking in the Philippines..

Still these elections do have some importance: eventhough its not the presidential elections, GMA's (Gloria M. Arroyo, the president) position is at stake: within the dominating elite there is a 2 camp of parties who want her out and parties who want her to stay. This reached a climax in 2005 when a telephone conversation between GMA and the electoral counting officer came out, revealing GMA had frauded the elections (the HELLO-Garcie scandal- for those interested: Garcie is now also running for local senator ;)). She even confessed the fraud, but due to a majority of pro-GMA parties, she was able to remain president.

So if in the coming elections the anti-GMA parties will have a majority, there is a big chance she will have to resign. This is a reason for many critics to fear fraud... Everybody is holding his breath... what will happen this time? The last elections there was a 3 hour brown out, what trick will be pulled this time on the backs of the people?

And not only ballots and votes are expected to be missing... In the last months over 100 people have been abducted or killed, either through targeted elimination of opposition, passer-by shootings or party-conflicts... again everybody is holding his breath for in the last week, everything can happen in the Carnival of the elections...

With every day that passes in the streets of the Philippines, every rural community I visit, with every silent peasant I meet, every new eyebrow raising story I hear, my vision of home gets more blurred... My life in amsterdam, my friends, my daily activities... Its getting difficult to imagine my life there with the experiences I have here...

Thank you thank you thank you so much for keeping in touch, it gives me again the feeling that I come from somewhere, im not alone here, and I have something to go back to.