My Piece of Cake (Plus More): GO OUT AND VOTE!

Only a few days left and it's Philippine election time. But then, I feel sad with the reports reaching me of low voter turn-out outside Philippine shores in the recent weeks and of negative surveys wherein majority of our countrymen are dissatisfied with the elections.

And with this, here's my piece of cake on this.

We're very very lucky to have such an electoral exercise, as mandated by our America-inherited democracy. Please let it be known we are just one of a few countries that allows all the citizens to vote directly for a government officials. From what I know, we Filipinos are luckier than the citizens of numerous authoritarian countries, whose government officials get appointed only by the central government in the capitals of those authoritarian countries, which has yet to fully answer all its citizens' needs. Look at the events in the 1989 massacre of thousands of rallyists in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in China-the Chinese government does not consider the voice of the rallyists; rather, the Chinese officials have their voices "controlled". (Hope by now, the Chinese government is changing, with the Olympics taking place there next year.)

Sure, our government has to answer fully our needs as citizens, but it considers the people's voice. Such proof of that is the public outcry against changes in the 1987 Philippine Constitution last year by the House of Representatives, which eventually gave in to the public pressure. Do you see the big difference?

One thing: our voice counts in this election. And it's a bonus to include global Filipinos in this event!

Heard of Miss Luchi Cruz-Valdez, a former news personality on Probe (hosted by Cheche Lazaro) who is now an ABS-CBN news exec? She shares her piece of cake:

They [the people] come up with all kinds of reasons – and many of them are not entirely invalid: Nothing’s going to change. It’s the same people. The quality of candidates is poor. The masses of poor voters are going to sell their votes and my wise votes won’t count. My candidate won’t win anyway. He’s going to steal us blind, too. They all do. Ad infinitum.

I won’t argue that they’re wrong because they’re not. But I will argue that not doing anything is not going to change anything either. As Edmund Burke succinctly puts it, "All it takes for evil to triumph… is for a few good men to do nothing."

...but if you choose to take on this insidious victim mentality and still refuse to neither act nor vote, then you’re not one of the few good men. And you surely will get what you deserve.

More of Miss Luchi's sentiments are here.

And how about the revered Maria Ressa, popularly known as one of the reporters for the world-reknowned CNN-have you heard of her? She is currently leading ABS-CBN in its election coverage dubbed as Halalan 2007. And here's her piece of cake:

Garci (former election commissioner Virgilio Garcillano) really shook the Filipinos’ faith in the electoral process so we need to make sure that these elections will restore our faith.

The other thing really is when you are talking about nearly 18,000 positions most of them in local elections, the potential for violence is large. We want to make sure we can minimize, use the power of media and of our collective partners to be able to minimize the number of election related violence.

Many of them [the voters] don’t even want to vote. You must vote. True people power is really in the hands of ordinary Filipinos. And it is through the vote. We must take that seriously and we want to use the power of ABS-CBN and all of our platforms to get that across to really literally move people to action.

More of Miss Maria's piece of cake is here.

Plus, without the vote of the people, there will be no ABS-CBN Halalan 2007.

So what are you waiting for? Go out and vote! (It's a Deal.)

Wait, you must be asking: How to vote? You must be registered to vote. If not, just brace yourselves for the 2010 elections. For those who registered, just click here.