For the greed for money, corruption persists

By CHITO DELA TORRE
October 28, 2010

Money was powerful last Monday.  It made the highest giver the much-sought for victory in the October 25, 2010 barangay elections.  It could have been powerless as to sway votes if it wasn’t given.

Of course, many did not join those who went to the house of Mr./Mrs. Punong Barangay Incumbent to receive between P100 and P500 that the re-electionist village chief was giving each voter who appeared in a list on which the recipient would affix “a” signature to vouchsafe that the cash election bribe was actually received.  Congressman/Congresswoman X/W, who gave at least P83,000 for every complete line-up of candidates for elective barangay positions, was actually not interested to look into that list, although he/she at first wanted to know why the incumbent first kagawad was not in the line-up submitted.

Kagawad candidates who gave P20 or P50 per voter did not, of course, reveal that the cash bribe came from X/W, although voters in their community knew there was much money to flood with.

Few, however, won without bribing voters.

Between these two dimensions, so clear are two lessons: first, if no politician would support any candidate with election money, no candidate would dare spend more than his or her own financial capability; and second, if not candidate would give out cash, no voter would ask for it.  In both lessons, elections could still push through, and winners could still be proclaimed.

Apart from this election offense that is known most popularly as vote-buying, another election offense was committed rather in a manner as if to insult the board of election tellers, the election laws, and democracy itself.  One candidate for kagawad used the line of voters as a strategy: each time she reached the BET’s table, she would not declare her intention to vote but would instead rejoin the new line from the tail-end, and repeat her condemnable act of asking voters in the line to vote for her or look through the window to find out what voters inside the voting precinct were writing on their ballots.

Hours before the election, non-resident registered voters dined and slept with a candidate whose family were prompted to render them “extra” service.  A few minutes to voting time, they walked to another candidate and received P300 each from the latter, then cast their votes.  By past 9 p.m., the P300-giver won by a large margin.

These were reports reaching the media, but the media could not do so much about them.

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Media practitioners should beware of a media photographer who might mingle with them.  The subject recently threatened to castigate a media man taller and bigger than his size, after the latter reportedly released to the media audience an awkward thing that he did that displeased a government official.  This same guy is already known to show himself off as a toughie, and would sometimes bully media reporters by shouting to their scare.  Apparently, he has no respect for others and his wrongdoings tend to vitiate the passivity of true-bloodied media personnel in the Waray Region.  He is one who does not deserve to stay any minute longer in the private, much less the government, media.

Government and respectable private entities should also beware of this media photographer.  Often, without any courtesy and even without being invited, he just barges in to try to impress others that he already is SOMEBODY.

Indeed, there are bad eggs who fell into the media basket.

Less than half a decade ago, a media reporter wildly spread a false report that a fellow reporter was receiving cash from a lady governor.  That false feed besmirched the image of the media, particularly in the place where the victim reporter was performing his reportorial functions.  An upcoming newsman, in another instance, was forced to file a libel case against one reporter who created a lie that almost isolated the former as one among the enemy targets of the military.  The root cause of both instances had been BIG MONEY, which divides media personnel and deplorably and unfairly downgrades the personality of the innocent among them.