ON BEING A STATE OFFICIAL

Rising to power in a country is a very difficult challenge especially if the population runs into millions and hundreds of millions. Then once elected, the next phase is how to maintain that power well onto its legal termination, and not by some kind of people power. Of course some leader choose to retain that power without end, just like Marcos and Khaddafy, with the latter reaching his ignominious end in the long run.

Crucial to this run for power are those institutions like the Commission on Elections which has that implicit and explicit role to check and approve who can run and who cannot run. During the time of GMA, many people parties, individuals, and party-list groups had their applications denied without any reason at all. I was told by an operator -- There's no way you can run, no way your application can be approved. So I wondered why he could say that with finality. Then I remembered him asking me, "Can you not raise P300,000?" No I don't have that much money, I said. "Can you not mortgage your house?" he asked further. I was too intimidated to ask him for whom that money was supposed to be; all along I had thought it would be for the printing of flyers, for going around the country to campaign. Then a fellow applicant told me, "he is a Comelec operator," someone who operates outside of the law to get funds to be shared with Comelec officials.

So with the turn of events in our country, I am still amazed that PNoy has won the elections -- what without greasing the palms of those guys? With the current moves to charge those who were responsible for stealing the people's votes in 2004 I now see that PNoy did not bribe any of those officials.

You see, you can know a crooked official by the way he smiles. He has that smirk as if to say, "You don't know me but I can put one over you." I saw that in the face of one of those commissioners who faced me when I was arguing my way to become a senatorial candidate in front of the Comelec en banc way back in 2009. He had that greedy look and kept on shaking his head -- probably he could not fathom why this individual and those individuals could be so naive to think that just by simply presenting pieces of paper, their credentials, no matter how pristine or how involved they had been in advocacies, could readily have their applications approved.

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree that those people should be charged with sabotage of the people's right to suffrage, the people's right to elect our own leaders. Let us feel the wrath of history on them. And they should not be allowed to leave the country at all until they have cleared their names of misdeeds and crimes against the people.

To steal the people's votes is to steal history -- the present and the future of generations of people. No purportedly Christian nation should ever allow that to pass at all without punishment.

Stealing is against the Ten Commandments. Stealing the people's right to choose leaders is an act against Christian principles. And those priests who condoned the stealing should also be punished, for they were wearing two hats then -- that of being the shepherd of God, and another, that of Al Capone.

Why the priests? Those who connived with that administration misused the words of the Bible to misguide the people. Worse yet, they enjoyed manna from it. By penalizing them, we are adhering to the tenets of Christ and strengthening our own value systems so that the next elections will not find any one cheating to get elected anymore.

Let the eyes of the people be opened to the stark realities and for us to look for proper and peaceful solutions without using armed struggle.