As I Was Saying

After two months of a forced vacation from this blog, I was more than eager to check where I left off after a series of computer hardware and network problems cut off my regular access to the internet right here in Lianga. For a time I toyed with the idea of updating this blog from other locations or by using other means of going online but I have. over the years, become essentially an old fashoned creature of habit and working online by flitting from one internet shop to another in guerrilla fashion or relying on laptops and other portable devices has never been my kind of thing.

I am and have always been a plodder of sorts even in my blogging. As a result, I have always favored spending a leisurely hour or two pondering on and composing my blog posts directly on the internet and simply tossing off a hurried blog entry on a portable computer or mobile phone was simply something I was never entirely comfortable with doing. I tried blogging that way and it never felt right.

In fact, I miss my old and trusty desktop computer and and the new one that has replaced it while certainly is a lot more faster as well as more reliable (it blazes through while the old one was just content to simply stagger and trot along), it does not have the cantankerous yet whimsical and rather eccentric personality of my old setup which made it seem like more like a collaborator and partner to me than just another sophisticated piece of electronic equipment.

Aftermath

I was one of the thousands of Lianga residents who trooped to the Lianga Central Elementary grounds last May 10 and who were eagerly waiting for the chance to vote in this country's first automated elections. Sad to say it was not the exciting or uplifting experience I had anticipated.

First, the weather had been rainy since the previous day and as can be expected whenever that happens the area around the polling precincts was already flooded up to almost knee deep in some spots when I got there at about 10 pm in the morning. Nothing dampens the spirit more than getting sopping wet in the chilling rain and sloshing through dirty flood waters only to find out that when you get to your destination that you have to stand in line for hours and get soaked a little more before you can accomplish what you expected you could breeze through in just a couple of minutes.

Despite the issuance of priority numbers in order to impose some order into the crush of humanity that had descended on the voting precincts, the board of election inspectors in my voting precinct could simply not efficiently accommodate the large turnout of voters eager to try out the new PCOS machines. The fact that the old number of voting precincts have been reduced and "clustered" into fewer units with several hundred voters assigned to it instead of the traditional hundred fifty or so also taxed the capabilities of the new voting system.

As it turned out, I had to return in the afternoon and battle once more the rain, floods and long queues in order to finally get in and vote. In what was a anticlimactic end to a half day ordeal, I got my ballot, made the proper marks on it, fed it to the PCOS machine (which accepted and tallied it with coldblooded efficiency) and got my right forefinger marked with indelible ink in a whole process that just took ten minutes.

Shameful

Altogether, the haul by local standards was not unimpressive. Two bars of laundry soap, four packs of instant noodles, two packs of embutido or steamed meatloaf and some three hundred pesos in cash.

The cash and and other items were all received by the household help in our house in Lianga over the past couple of days from various candidates running for local positions in the May 10 general elections. The local term for the "gifts" is "pahalipay" which in Bisaya is derived from the word "lipay" meaning to be happy. In reality, they are electoral bribes or money and consumer goods used to brazenly buy votes in what is clearly becoming an increasingly overt and disturbing upsurge of this type of electoral misconduct at least in this part of the country.

In past elections, vote-buying was already rampant but even then it was always done covertly and clandestinely in perverse acknowledgement, perhaps by those who have always done it, of its clearly illegal and immoral nature. Thus the monies used to buy votes were usually delivered a day or so before polling day and often in the dead of night by trusted couriers who would stealthily knock on doors and windows like cat burglars to wake up voters and their families. If goods were used to solicit votes, they were often inconspicuously wrapped and handed over to their intended recipients as surreptitiously as possible.

Yet in the days leading up to the May 10 elections, many candidates running for municipal and provincial posts have become more brazen in their vote-buying activities to the point that many of them had openly gone house to house in vehicles conspicuously displaying their campaign banners and streamers and openly distributing money and consumer items marked with their names or clipped to sample ballots and campaign handbills.

Homestretch

If there is one thing that marked the recent final campaign rally of the Lakas-Kampi-CMD administration party in Lianga which was held the other night at the community stage inside the municipal park, it was the surprising level of vituperation and invective that emanated from the lips of one of the party stalwarts that spoke onstage. And all of it was directed at the leading lights of the Liberal Party which is mounting the only viable opposition to the Lakas party's iron grip on political power in the province of Surigao del Sur.

Lakas which, as a national political machine, has kept President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in power for more than half a decade now has also been the means by which the powerful Pimentel-Ty clan have dominated provincial politics here for the past nine years. It has elected and returned to power Gov. Vicente Pimentel Jr. since 2001 and now his brother, Johnny Pimentel, the current provincial administrator, is eyeing to inherit the office that the current governor is prohibited by law from occupying for more than three consecutive terms.

The Pimentel-Ty clan is closely allied with Rep. Philip Pichay who represents the province's first district in Congress. Philip is the brother of Prospero "Butch" Pichay, the Malacañang confidant, former congressman, 2007 senatorial candidate and incumbent presidential adviser on political affairs who is also currently chairman of the Local Water Utilities Administration. The political partnership between the Pichays and the Pimentel-Ty clan had been the engine that originally powered that clan to power in the province and the Pichays are counting on the Pimentel-Ty political machine to insure a second term for the re-electionist Philip whose congressional district happens to include Lianga.

Stand-In

I was more than a bit surprised at the spate of comments sent to this blog concerning the person, reputation and even the supposed airplane antics of the Hon. Philip Pichay, the incumbent congressional representative for the first district of Surigao del Sur (which includes the town of Lianga). Pichay happens, at present, to be gunning for re-election to a second term in the coming May 2010 general elections.

The truth of the matter is I do not know Rep. Pichay personally. Few of his constituents really do. What I am aware of is the public face of the man, the persona he has presented to his constituency in the three years he has served as our man in Congress. Even then it is a face that is enigmatic as it is confusing.

It is perhaps to his eternal misfortune that Philip must always be seen by the people here in contrast to his brother, Prospero "Butch" Pichay, the erstwhile 2007 senatorial candidate and Malacañang confidant who is currently chairman of the Local Water Utilities Administration before serving three terms in the same position Philip is presently occupying. Butch Pichay's shadow in both local and national politics continues to loom large and much of Philip's PR problems has to do with having to live up to the expectations of many of his constituents who see him as his brother's alter ego and not his own man.

Those who know him and have worked with him say that Philip is more the gruff, hard-nosed and work driven businessman than the folksy, backslapping and socially adroit politician that his brother is. They say he is results oriented, works hard at what he does and has little appetite for the PR side of politics. As a consequence, they say, he is perceived to be cold and inaccessible by the many of the local folks who are not comfortable with public personalities not deemed, in the local parlance, "politico" enough.

Running Start

The start of the official campaign period for politicians gunning for local positions in the May 2010 general elections started Friday two weeks ago with a whimper in Lianga. Unlike the histrionics and pseudo-showbiz antics with which national candidates inaugurated the start of their own campaign period earlier, what characterized the first days of electioneering here, at least for local candidates, was an atmosphere of frantic calm, a sudden quickening of tension amidst what, at first glance, would pass for just another regular day in the boondocks.

In the old days, local politicians would vie for the honor and prestige of being the first to greet the first day of the campaign with huge, elaborate rallies and meetings de avance. The idea, of course, was to intimidate the opposition with a show of financial and logistical strength calculated to cow them into some form of surrender and abject submission.

Nowadays, it would seem that local politicians have decided to change tactics. The strategy, it now seems, is to maximize the limited financial resources they have in this hard economic times and the get the biggest bang for every buck they have to spend. So, expensive rallies and meetings are discouraged while smaller and more intimate caucuses with community leaders, voting blocs and ordinary voters are in now favor.

House to house sorties are suddenly back in vogue with candidates going the rounds of even the remotest barangays or villages to press the flesh and shake the calloused and dirty hands of the rural electorate. Local community leaders are personally sought out and courted with outright cash incentives and promises of future favors. If the elections were a basketball game, this was "man to man" offence and defence of the first order.