The ugly face of vote buying

HAPPY WEEKEND
Gina Dizon

BONTOC, Mountain Province -- Vote buying once again reared its ugly head this election period.

It had taken many forms from the reported printing of one candidate’s face in a T-shirt for senior citizens, to giving out of tents to local government units bearing one’s initials, to giving out public health funds to barangay officials during the height of the campaign period. All these at the reported expense of government funds to benefit a person and his candidacy. Much as vote buying is morally corrupt, vote buying is also prohibited by law.

Vote buying constitutes the act of giving, offering, or promising money or anything of value, including promises of “employment, franchise or grant, public or private", according to the Election Code, vote-buying also involves making or offering to incur expenses that will, directly or indirectly, benefit a person, association, corporation, entity, or community “to induce anyone or the public in general to vote for or against any candidate or withhold his vote in the election, or to vote for or against any aspirant for the nomination or choice of a candidate in a convention or similar selection process of a political party."

Word is rife that a corrupt candidate is already actively buying votes as financing family reunions, giving money to barangay captains and sacks of rice to families.

Giving of money by corrupt candidates to voters happens a day before the actual elections. In previous election periods, a number of people claimed they received at least P200 to P1,000 pesos. Yet, is it a guarantee that buying people’s votes will ensure one’s victory in the electoral race?

Some get the money and vote for another candidate. I am led to believe that vote-buying is not always a major consideration to winning an electoral race. It has been proven in the 2007 elections that a top official perceived to have bought votes, lost to a rival candidate in vote-rich Paracelis perceived to have rendered services benefitting the people of the far-flung municipality.

And so it goes that some voters pocketed the money and voted for the candidate who gave the money, saying they can’t do otherwise to contradict the giver, much as they have received. Some say there is no harm in receiving as it is peoples’ money anyway. Some did not accept the money.

Some say it would be better not to receive the money because vote buying will sustain corruption. Because where else will the official get the money to repay what he has distributed to buy votes but to get money from corrupted government projects?

And when vote buying sustains corruption, it will be another round of suffering for the people. Medicine and medical facilities will get corrupted. Peoples’ health will be sacrificed at their expense in place of the official’s greed for money. Roads will be sub-standard. This will mean uncomfortable travel conditions and accidents.

It will mean the official is more focused in getting commissions from contracts rather than concentrating his work in providing services to his constituents.

Social services will not be genuinely attended to. Even educational facilities will suffer owing to a greedy official who has primary interest to get cuts from government projects.

Public interest is not anymore in the mind of the corrupted official, but self interest. This will mean unjust enrichment on the part of the official who benefits from amassing corrupted money and buying houses, cars, land and money for himself and his family.

It will also mean further poverty and abuse on the people.

Vote buying has never been that good for people’s interest. Don’t vote for the candidate who buys your votes. People are not commodities to be bought.

And so we can say then that change indeed will happen for Mountain Province, where the basic attitude and behavior on vote buying will not be entertained. Where officials who stayed long in office have long not introduced systems to change patronage politics in government and continue to perpetuate it, and people as well persist to hug vote buying and tolerate corruption, this electoral process is just another political exercise done every three years- an exercise boring enough to be tolerated.