WHY PEOPLES' PRIMARIES

Dear FOLKS,

Our country currently suffers from many ills, political, economic,cultural and most of all social problems that seem to pile up day by day. Our only hope to solve these is to concentrate fully on how we can elect leaders who will take serious cognizance of their roles and to inject in full ethical, principled and good governance policies that will inspire others – their co-officials, their co-employees and the public in general.

The Peoples’ Primaries aims at realizing this so that the year 2010 will be a good and bountiful year that will allow us to harvest leaders that will make us survive and rise up from all the problems that we continually suffer from.

Many oppose this move, but we think that this stems more from a meager knowledge of the Peoples’ Primaries than from the lack of its definition and its practices. Moreover, those opposing could be profiting from the status quo and hence do not want to shake the very foundations that bring about highly questionable governance in terms of just practices.

Hence, we would like to explain what it is all about. The primary system is meant to transfer the right to elect a presidential candidate and other national and local candidates from an
elite, entitled few into the hands of voters. The system will also curb the use of guns, goons and gold in getting elected.

Candidates under the system will be forced to pay attention to issues that voters consider important, their platforms as springboard for debate among the candidates. Thus, with this kind of approach, elections will no longer be a source of illegal funds, or more importantly corrupt spending to elect a political gangster who will use his or her position to steal from the people’s coffers. Citizens will now take part in the process of choosing their own leaders.

We can stop the era of cheating, buying votes and election killings through the Peoples’ Primaries. By electing together as one the candidate that we feel should be endorsed, we are acting as one in shaping democracy, the progress, the prosperity and peace that our country should reach. We can make a difference in how this country can be run, if we only work together along this democratic path, the path of Peoples’ Primaries.

Now is the time for all of us to join, unite and work together in creating a new country, a new Philippines, caring of her citizens, though high or low in economic status, regardless of sex, of age, of creed, we shall create the new Filipino people in in thought, word and deed.



- Cheryl Piperberg painting, Children Love the World