Where are the figures?

Either acting Commission on Elections (Comelec) chairman Christian Lim does not have the actual figures to support his claim that vote-buying incidents increased in 2013, or he’s more into giving knee-jerk generalizations.  Over the weekend, Lim claimed that because politicians were at their wits’ ends on how to tamper with the results of automated elections, they resorted to more vote-buying in the 2013 polls.

That’s a logical conclusion for any Tom, Dick and Harry to make, but for someone who was just named acting chief of the Comelec, I expected Lim to have done his homework first  before making this pronouncement to media. He should have come up with comparative  figures on the incidents of vote-buying during the last manual election  and the succeeding automated polls.

At the very least, Lim could have cited a number of government officials elected in 2013 whose seats were forfeited on account of over-spending and whose forfeiture, at least in one instance, was upheld by a ruling of the Supreme Court.  If not anipso facto proof of vote-buying, overspending by an electoral candidate suggests he or she was ready and willing to get any advantage over a rival by any means possible.

I, likewise, do not subscribe to the view that the passing of a “money ban” law prohibiting the withdrawal of P100,000 per day and the transport of over P500,000 in a span of six days before election day could put into effect a similar ban shot down by the SC in the May 2013 mid-term polls. Such a law, I think, would be declared unconstitutional because it would run counter to many provisions of our organic law that gives our people the freedom to trade goods and do commerce.

Since when did economic activities grind to a halt or slow down on account of the elections? The Comelec must be more creative in going after election cheats than reviving or floating the revival of silly notions like that of a money ban.

                                      -end-



Image by The Guardian