Post from New Year 1 Jan 2009

I wrote this literally New Year's Eve, and sent it off, and had a pleasant surprise a month later to see that it was published in the letters to the editor in the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

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Where has the year gone, a friend wrote me a week ago. I had meant to set aside some quality time to write a reflective tome on the year, but here I now find myself in the interstitial spaces of life, trying to accomplish one of the tasks I feel are truly important.

Rina Jimenez David wrote with disarming honesty about a sense of gloom amidst the celebration, of a darkness ahead borne on winds of uncertainty, underlined by a disturbing apathy in the nation.

We have more to be worried about these days, beginning from the President's impunity in the face of substantive allegations against her cohort, and immediate family. We nearly had another martyr – GMA at least, had learned her lesson from recent history. And of course, the rice shortage, and now the global financial crisis have undermined the hopes we would have held for a more prosperous year ahead.

Apprehension about the New Year is not such a bad thing. It at least hints that the realisation is taking hold that doing nothing will only exacerbate an almost intolerably bad situation. There is much to be concerned about, and the question that may be at the back of people's minds may be: "how much more of this can I take"?

No on ever wants to go backward, so there can only be one answer to that question. Once that question is resolved, the mind turns to the issue of what action to take.

The first priority

Barack Obama's victory as president-elect must be the good news story of the year – an inspiration almost, but not quite as uplifting as was Pacman's two triumphs. But the one thing that struck me as I watched Obama give his victory speech, was this: there was a man who had just felt the world's weight fall squarely on his shoulders. Was it just me, or didn't Obama sombre face belie the burden he had just assumed? So showed the man's nature, that public office was a matter of immense responsibility, and not simply a matter of triumph or victory.

In the wake of Obama's victory we have had no shortage of those who claim to be the Philippines version of Obama. But that victory was not his, and to see it as such is to miss the point about the Philippines issues.

Walt Whitman wrote in his poem "Election Day, November 1884" that America's greatness was not in the grandeur of its landscape, the geysers of Yosemite and the Niagara fall, but in the quadrennial choosing. The most powerful force in that great nation was that "still small voice vibrating – America's choosing day"

The benefit out of that process, what Whitman thought was the greatest force in America, is what the Philippines is denied today. It was corrupted four years ago with Garci's kind assistance. GMA barely escaped that crisis, and here we are four years hence, seriously contemplating giving up that force again through the debate about Cha Cha.

There is a lot that's wrong about the Philippines, but change must begin somewhere, and change must come, if the Philippines chooses to fight against the forces of corruption and darkness, from its "choosing day".

Too often, as good catholics, we rely on simply having good intentions and convictions. But the challenge we face, if we want change, is to start somewhere. To that end, I think there should be a national concerted civic focus on implementing timely, reliable, transparent, centrally tallied, technology-based vote counting systems in the next presidential election. The nation must take an active interest in protecting the integrity of the Philippines "choosing day". The continuation and integrity of the voting process should be the concern of every Filipino who can see that there must be a better way of life than what GMA offers.

It is far too important a step to be left to those who would profit from another Garci episode.