Elections, US style

As the counting of votes proceeded like clockwork in the US 2012 elections, Filipinos in general and Cebuanos in particular were treated to yet another display of American-style democracy at work, which, while the subject of rising criticism both here and abroad, was nevertheless a wonder to behold and analyze.

The voting process began late in the evening Philippine time and the results trickled in steadily the following morning with Americans and those monitoring the election results getting more or less an idea of who will become the next US president.

By 1:30 p.m. Philippine time, Republican candidate Mitt Romney gave his concession speech, brief though it was and congratulated Obama on a fresh four-year term. If there was any bitterness in defeat Romney was graceful enough not to show it and no matter how tight the election, he didn’t break tradition done by nearly every US presidential candidate whether he lost or won.

Obama was as usual his eloquent self and it would take some space to elaborate on his points. Suffice it to say that the US election process, despite the harrowing catastrophe that is Super Storm Sandy, failed to dampen and obstruct the exercise of the right to vote by affected New Yorkers and New Jersey natives.

What lessons can we get from yesterday’s US election exercise? Plenty of course as Commission on Elections (Comelec) chairman Sixto Brillantes pointed out. While the US election results came out and wasn’t contested three hours later, here in the country election results are being contested in court and the Comelec three years after the polls were held.

Two such examples are the Compostela election case in which the mayor and his council managed to sit in as officials only this year or two years after the national elections and the case of former congressman Tining Martinez, who only got to sit in Congress a few months before the 2010 elections while his rival Rep. Benhur Salimbangon managed to serve out his three-year term.

The automated elections of 2010, while mostly a success in managing to speed up the tabulation of votes was not without drawbacks as the politicians and incumbent officials employed every dirty trick in the book to win the elections, thus proving the adage that in the Philippines, there are no losers in the elections only those who claimed they were cheated of victory.

The road to fair, honest, transparent, accessible and swift elections in the country continues to be a pipe dream but steps are being taken by the government and the private sector to make it happen.

It may not be achieved within the decade but it is not an impossible dream and it only needs a lot of commitment and hard work on our part to make it happen.