Purging should
be the priority

Published by the Visayan Daily Star Publications, Inc.

NINFA R. LEONARDIA Editor-in-Chief & President

CARLA P. GOMEZ Managing Editor ANTONIETA B. LOPEZ Business Editor ODETTE MONTELIBANO Desk Editor MARY ANN BARCELONA Advertising Coordinator RENE GENOVE Bureau Chief, Dumaguete

ANDRES R. LEONARDIA Managing Director

If this administration is to prove that it is sincere in its pronouncements of cleansing the government, one of the first things it must focus on is the purging of the voters list by the Commission on Elections. This is the government agency that has the biggest role in ensuring that the true will of the people is reflected in the choice of the officials who will lead them.

For several decades now, our country has been notorious for the anomalies that have characterized the process of electing our leaders. Charges of vote-buying, results tampering, threats, intimidation, bribery, use of the Three G's, or Guns, Goons and Gold, and other forms of corrupt practices and cheating have hounded the elections, not only in the urban centers, but even in the most distant hinterland puroks and barangays.

Of course, our election laws provide for the filing of protests against perceived anomalies committed during elections, but, sadly, few of them prosper, and those which actually do are also perceived to have done so because of more bribery and corruption, in which the Commission on Election officials themselves are often suspect.

It is a big shame that our country has become known for the alleged voting by ghosts and flying voters, and also for the magic tricks, supposedly abetted by Comelec personnel and officials themselves, played on the reports on election returns, making them favorable to whoever is in power, or who has the bribe money to facilitate it.

The recent claim of a Comelec official that their attempts to purge the voters' lists nationwide had to be discontinued because of lack of proper equipment does not wash. If it had the authority and the funds to purchase several millions of dollars worth of equipment supposed to computerize the voting proves, which were never utilized at all, and the purchase of which had been declared illegal by the Supreme Court, why did it not prioritize the cleansing of the voters' list?

Now that the ploy of canceling the elections scheduled in 2007 is being rejected by the people, this purging must top whatever agenda the Comelec has for it. Only when it is done, honestly, thoroughly, and with total credibility will the people be convinced that this administration's pronouncements contain even a modicum of sincerity.*