That which divides us

FROM A DISTANCE, it appears as if the protagonists in the Philippine drama are playing a deadly game of "chicken" with all the parties racing furiously to the precipice -- a la "Rebel Without a Cause" -- waiting to see who will be the first to put on the brakes.

As of this past weekend, the banged-up cars are still racing full-bore towards the edge of the cliff but there have been some twists in the road. On Friday last week, 10 key administration officials ("the reform bloc") resigned from the Cabinet of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (PGMA) and called on her to resign because, in their view, she had been too preoccupied with the crisis to effectively govern. Just the week before, they had led other Cabinet members in singing "We can hold on together."

They were also joined in the resign chorus by former president Cory Aquino, a faction of the Liberal Party led by Senate and LP president Franklin Drilon and the Makati Business Club, all of whom had previously expressed support for the beleaguered president. Their announcements were timed to influence the decision of the influential Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), which was meeting over the weekend.

But, before the day was through, there was yet another twist in the road when former president Fidel V. Ramos rallied to the defense of Macapagal-Arroyo together with House Speaker Joe deVenecia and members of their Lakas-NUCD Party.

And, after four drafts in two days of intense deliberations, the CBCP decided not to join the resign bandwagon, taking the steam out of the momentum.
These dramatic developments have attracted the attention of the mainstream media. On July 7, I was interviewed by CBS TV reporter Joe Vasquez who stated in his introduction that the 450,000 Filipinos in the San Francisco Bay Area (12 percent of the area population) are closely monitoring the events in Manila and greatly concerned about what will happen to their motherland.

After my interview appeared on local TV, one neighbor called to ask what the big fuss was about the presidential elections in the Philippines. "Like many Filipinos," she said, "I too don't believe the president won the elections fair and square. But I'm not talking about the Philippine elections." She explained that she is absolutely convinced that President George W. Bush cheated in the 2000 presidential elections in Florida.

My neighbor related that in the months leading to the November 2000 elections, Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, both co-chairs of the Bush presidential campaign in the sunshine state, ordered the removal of tens of thousands of voters from the Florida voter rolls on the alleged grounds that they were ex-felons and not entitled to vote.

The post of Secretary of State in Florida is the same as that of the entire seven-member Comelec (Commission on Elections) in the Philippines as it oversees the entire election operations of the state and makes decisions regarding the voting and counting of the ballots.

To remove the ex-felons from the voter rolls, Bush and Harris turned over the assignment to a company by the name of ChoicePoint to comb through and purge the ex-felons from the list of voters. ChoicePoint determined that 94,000 registered voters, virtually all of whom were African-Americans, were ex-felons and removed their names from the voter list, with the full authority of Governor Bush and Secretary of State Harris. But it turned out that more than 97 percent of the people whose names were removed from the list were innocent, and were not ex-felons. Ooops.

On election day, tens of thousands of these African-Americans who trooped to the polls to vote discovered that their names were not listed in their regular precincts so they couldn't vote. All the Secretary of State could tell them was "Sorry, it was an honest mistake." But was it?

The pre-election polls showed that more than 90 percent of the African-American vote favored Al Gore for president. These polls were borne out by the actual election results which showed that 93 percent of Florida's African-American voters supported Gore. Bush won Florida by a mere 537 votes giving him the state's Electoral College votes which proved to be the winning margin for him.

In my neighbor's view, the situation in the Philippines would be the same as what happened in Florida if all the members of the Comelec were in charge of the election campaign of President Arroyo (as Katherine Harris was in Florida for Bush) and could purge the voters list of thousands of opposition supporters. (The only difference between them is that no "Hello, Kathy" tape has surfaced yet.)

After the 2000 elections, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) filed a class-action suit against the state of Florida claiming that African-American voters were systematically disenfranchised in the November 7, 2000 elections by having their names illegally removed from the voting rolls and by the setting up of police roadblocks in black precincts on election day to discourage blacks from voting.

On August 26, 2002, the state of Florida reached a settlement with the NAACP agreeing to sweeping modifications in voter registration, voter-roll maintenance and polling practices. The state of Florida was willing to concede the allegations of the NAACP lawsuit because it would not change the results of the 2000 presidential elections.

Americans are more willing to accept the "cheating" in Florida because the Democratic opposition accepted the election results, unlike in the Philippines where no one ever concedes losing an election. While the Democrats believe they were cheated out of victory, their "love of country" allowed them to sublimate their personal political interests to that of the larger national interests of the US.
When he conceded the elections after the US Supreme Court had ruled, 5-4, in favor of Bush, Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore said:
"Almost a century and a half ago, Senator Stephen Douglas told Abraham Lincoln, who had just defeated him for the presidency, 'Partisan feeling must yield to patriotism. I'm with you, Mr. President, and God bless you.' Well, in that same spirit, I say to President-elect Bush that what remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside, and may God bless his stewardship of this country… Now the US Supreme Court has spoken. Let there be no doubt, while I strongly disagree with the Court's decision, I accept it. I accept the finality of this outcome, which will be ratified next Monday in the Electoral College. And tonight, for the sake of the unity of our people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession… Now is the time to recognize that that which unites us is greater than that which divides us."

Is that which divides Filipinos greater than that which unites Filipinos?

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