"Strive to be humble in victory and gracious in defeat..."
To the winners of the recent elections,
Please prove to us that you deserve the position where you have been elected.
Remember that you are now public servants, ergo, you serve the public and not your own interests.
and hopefully, you have won that position fair and square.
To those who did not win this elections,
If you have legitimate legal contentions, seek the necessary legal remedies.
However, please do not resort to violence in voicing your frustration against the winners and please continue your advocacy (if any) even if you failed to win the position you desired.
To us voters,
I know we tried our best to persuade, influence or even dictate to other people that some candidates are more deserving than the others. We try to magnify the weaknesses of the other candidates hoping that it will change the tide of the survey results. However, let us accept the fact that majority of the voting public had already preferred some candidates to whom they entrust the stewardship of the Government. We may not agree with the majority, at least we showed our support for the deserving ones. This means that we need to try a little bit harder next elections in order to change the dynamics of our elections.
As superstarmarian puts it,
"We accept the government, we think that we deserve"
Aside from the fact that the right to vote or suffrage is enshrined in our Constitution, I think that the process of selecting our government officials by way of voting is one of the signs that we are living in a democratic country.
Sadly, this democratic process has been abused by opportunistic candidates. Since time in memorial, vote-buying has been rampant especially in the local elections.
A single vote is so precious that an electoral candidate is willing to shell out at least
Php 5,000 just to convince one voter to vote for him.
However, despite all the negative circumstances surrounding the elections, I am still hopeful that majority of the voting population will elect the rightful and deserving candidates.
With the advent of the information technology especially the social networking sites, voters now can scrutinize and review all the candidates, whether local or national.
I see that the next coming elections, the "bad eggs" grabbing a seat in the Senate or Congress will be lessened. This is because the people will be more vigilant in picking their choices.
The people will choose the candidate that has integrity, honor, solid platform, a very remarkable educational background and deep working experience, not to mention, a candidate with charisma with the masses and the initiative to effect changes that their constituents direly need.
Call me idealistic, but I still believe that we could soon see the candidates engaging debates on stage rather than
seeing them sing and dance together with their celebrity endorsers.
I am very optimistic that it will be done.
We should exercise our right to vote.
Forget about the heat, forget about the long queues, forget the fact that your newly manicured index finger will get stained....
Remember that our future depends on those shaded ovals.
Quoting Randy David in his column,
"We have to build with every vote; we do not vote only when we have the perfect candidates."
