Don’t pin your hopes on elected leaders, say rights lawyers
FILIPINOS should not pin too much hope on the old and new national and local leaders who will emerge victorious in the elections.
The human rights defenders group National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers said the country’s perennial problems could not be deemed solved after the election winners are proclaimed.
In a statement, NUPL secretary general Edre Olalia said it was hard to ignore what others might consider as a truism while still others view as a cynical take on the trappings of formal democracy: That the “oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.”
“We thus look forward to this day but not as the be-all and end-all of so many things that are perennially wrong in our country. We look forward more to the day when all the basic questions and fundamental concerns of the ordinary people are sincerely, resolutely and concretely addressed, not only for them but by them, elections or no elections,” he said.
The group noted that many candidates made promises and may have taken advantage of the popular clamor for change, so the people should be vigilant and make sure these promises are kept.
Olalia said elections did not necessarily mean solutions to problems ranging from hunger to agrarian reform, extrajudicial killings, corruption to armed conflict, and traffic congestion to an unfair justice system.
“We look forward to the day when all these questions, and many more, are addressed head on, away from the fierce and at times pretentious competition for votes at all costs where mud and muck thrown around leave so much mote not only in one’s vision but also in one’s common sense in the desperation for an automated quick fix,” he said.
While the right of the people to exercise the right of suffrage must be respected, the people’s hopes and frustrations expressed through their ballots “must be grounded amidst the frenzied circus that has riveted us away from outstanding questions that remain unanswered or glossed over.”
“At the end of the day, are the lives of the people, especially the poor, oppressed and exploited, going to be any better? More picturesquely, will the toiling farmer, daily wage worker, starving urban poor, distressed migrant, hard up market vendor, slavish streetsweeper and the ordinary people revert to a state of nganga (nothing) after Election Day?” he said.
