The barangay and SK polls

There has been a heavy turnout for the registration of new voters and Comelec was forced to extend the registration for the barangay and the youth or SK elections.

Malacañang even declared no classes yesterday for high school and college students to accommodate those who have not registered yet. This is very laudable because our people, especially the young, are conscious of their patriotic duty to elect the best leaders.

In First World countries, the percentage of voter turnout is much less. Our new registrants are given transportation or snack allowance by prospective candidates who believe, if they win in the October election they can get back what they spend, through their salary or whatever means.

While this is true, there is still the patriotic urge. In addition if they are voters, in every coming election, if manna falls from heaven, they will not be excluded.

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I saw the interview of Alex Espino in his program "Politics Etcetera" over television with City Comelec Registrar Mavil Majarucon.

Alex was able to extract so many pieces of information from Comelec. One of these is the information that if registrants filled up the forms, but were not recorded, they are not registered.

There are still many of them. Barangay leaders and SK leaders, must check this out. Atty. Majarucon said if they go to vote, they cannot vote because they have no name in the list of voters.

They have to go back to Comelec and have the registration authenticated if they want to vote in October.

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We join Alex in commending lawyer Majarucon. She handled the Bacolod election in 2004 and 2007 well. The election last May was clean, honest, orderly, and fair. Nobody complained.

The vote margin in the Congressional fight was 1,020 or less than one vote in every precinct for a total of, I think, 1,700 precincts. But there was no reason to complain.

Of course, Comelec provincial head Jessie Suarez is good, too. We heard he is slated to be the regional director to take over the job of incumbent director Magbutay who, I understand, is facing some complaints.

He was not able to resolve the proclamation of Antique Governor Sally Perez.

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I talked with the two tough girls of Comelec Daisy Real and Mavil Majarucon one time. That was after, together with Suarez, they went to San Jose, Antique and resolved the issue which saw earlier two changes of the board of canvassers.

How did you do it? I asked the two. Simple, they said, knowledge of the law and firmness. They said, if they survived Bacolod with a naughty lawyer like Allan Zamora, they can survive anywhere.

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The main secret is still the credibility and integrity of the Comelec official. No matter how well an official acts, if he is not believed, what he does is useless. This is the common problem with our public officials. The perception of a very corrupt society does not spare even the good ones. Although we still have very many good public officials where no anomaly has stained their names.

I always quoted and I will quote again Alfred Tenny

son's poem when Sir Galahad said, "My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure."

And a friend one time told me, forget the Age of Chivalry. That's long gone destroyed by Miguel Cervantes' Don Quixote who, picturing himself as a knight in shining armor, took the windmill as an enemy and attacked it. Don Quixote lost his mind by reading stories of chivalry.

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Let us help make the barangay and SK election successful.

This is long overdue because Congress kept on postponing it. There are very many barangay officials who have long outlived their usefulness. And people in the barangays have been restless. There have been many complaints, too, against barangay officials who misuse funds. Look at the very many projects given to the barangays but look at the accomplishments. They are nil.

The Commission on Audit should be tasked to make a thorough audit of barangay funds coming from government. The perception that we are a corrupt country starts with people in the barangays who see how government funds are misused.

***

The collapse of the bridge the other day in Minneapolis in Minnesota is tragic. Five died and 30 are missing.

Our friend lawyer William Mirano and family passed by that bridge a few hours before the collapse. They visited a family friend, Dr. and Mrs. Nelson Paguyo.*

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