Thoughts On The Upcoming 2010 Philippine Election

The 2010 Philippine Election is coming in a few days. I feel a little scared to see what will happen on May 10, 2010. Five more days to be exact, and a new president will be sitting again to try and change the current situation of the Philippines. Will this election be our chance to change what we had for the past 9 years?

I haven’t tried to vote ever since. I didn’t have time to register last year to be able to vote on this 2010 election. But it doesn’t mean that I don’t care about our country. It doesn’t mean that I don’t understand how politics works in this country. I read newspapers sometimes and watch the news more often. But it’s quite hard to trust the media nowadays because I think they’re becoming a little bias. I am not accusing them of being bias, it is just what I see when I watch the television. A few more days and it’s May 10, but why are these PCOS (Precinct Count Optical Scan) machines from SmartMatic still generates wrong data compare to the manual counting done by the testers? News are all over that the PCOS machine tests failed from several parts of the country. A rough estimate of P7.2 Billion was the budget for those machines. So what now? Will it be useless come May 10? Will we go back to the usual manual counting procedure? And what if we don’t? Lots of unanswered questions are going through my mind right now.

I know it’s hard to choose a candidate that is ‘capable’ to handle a country like this. Have you ever asked yourself if your chosen candidate is capable or not? What are your metrics or qualifications that you think your chosen candidate possesses to be able to rule this country? I got this National Candidate Profile (pdf file) a few weeks ago from a colleague. It contains basic information, achievements and certain advocacy of our national candidates. We don’t have to rely on this one either but it can serve as a resume of your chosen candidate. After reading that, ask yourself. Does he/she deserves your vote?

We all have the right to choose our candidate. But I hope that my fellow Filipino people will vote wisely this time.