How I Want to Vote

It's been a while since I last blogged on a general, serious topic. This post took me about a week to draft, as I want this to be something relevant and convincing.

One of my more patriotic dreams (yup, I've a bit of patriotism) involves political maturity. I'd like to actually see the day when the Congress is truly representative, when public officials are held accountable to the people, when political affiliations have some semblance of permanence, when people vote based on issues, when popularity and patronage politics is no longer the norm. But of course I'm 27 (and in a few weeks time, I'll be 28), and if I keep smoking, I'd die before all that happens.

It's the election season once more (bah!), Senate-version. Again, as a voter, I am thrust into the duty of separating the "bad" from the "not-so-bad". At least from the line-ups of both team UNITY and team GO, I would only call Joker Arroyo good, but then again he did join the administration camp. Not that I'm for GO, but couldn't he have gone the independent route?

I have a project challenge for the major dailies and other media outlets. I want you, for the sake of more intelligent voting, to come up with something like this:



Brief profiles of each senatorial candidate with the complete history of his or her voting record. Or at least the most notable pieces of legislation. And attendance records. Maybe even prior posts held and a summarized assets-and-liabilities statement (input by my kid brother, who is in the same political party I was in when I ran for a seat at our University's student council). This should encourage more issue-based voting on the national level, which God knows is severely lacking during all the elections held since I was born.

I remember during the 2004 elections on how I voted for some of the senatoriables because of their performance in the 2001 impeachment trial. I voted for people because I knew what they stood for: women, the environment, education, or at the very least basic tenets of good governance. Although lately, political ads have surfaced touting Zubiri's authorship of the Biofuels Act (which is giving me nightmares in my line of work) and Villar's the Anti-Violence Against Women Act, something the previous election did not have. This should give people the idea what they stand for, or at least show that these are things you also need to know. Sure, it's a shameless act of pendering done to get exposure before the official campaign period, but what the hell.

Of course, I see this is going to be a problem for anyone who hasn't been previously elected. Hell, it's going to be a problem even for those who are. But these are the things that people deserve to know. First off, people need to know what legislators do, but this should be a big pointer in the right direction.

I'm calling out to major broadsheets, and their media allies for the elections coverage. How about coming up with something like this? Because I need to see more than their faces.

Filipinos need this. We need relevant, reliable information to arm voters. We don't need to know our candidates' campaign slogans, see their toothy smiles, hear their mind-numbling jingles. We especially don't need to know how much they're giving us in dole-outs. We need to know the issues, and we need to force any future senator or candidate to want to stick to the issues.