Instead of going out and enjoying the countryside during my last few weeks in the Philippines, I spent three long days in a small room in the Asian Institute of Management in Makati City moderating a workshop on “Local Government and Liberal Politics.” At the beginning, I encouraged the participants to set up a workshop blog - and I am happy with the frequency and the quality of the posts. Putting up a blog in a political seminar is a useful tool for documenting important results and disseminating these to others. I have also found this a suitable strategy to promote the concept of blogging.

As much of the content of the workshop is available online, I will limit myself to two observations.

First, with only few exceptions all the participants (a governor, vice governors, mayors, vice mayors and local councilors) were members of the Liberal Party. Which Liberal Party ?, one would hasten to ask in these times of disunity. Interestingly, the split did not seem that much an issue with the local leaders. Of course, they have their preferences, and are either for or against the president. At the same time, it became clear to me that most of the participants see themselves foremost as Liberals and hope to see unity return soon.

My second observation: with but a few exceptions this has been a gathering of serious, hard-working and intellectually sophisticated local officials. Some of them shared impressive track records of political performance, and all had a vision of a better future for their communities. In short: they are the good guys!

I am saying this, because, unfortunately, life in the field is tough and Philippine politics is, at times, brutal and highly illiberal. While many local officials are fighting to bring development to their communities, there are also those local officials who - deliberately - keep their areas in misery. Said one participant:

“These politicians are not interested in improving the lot of the lives of their constituents, because then in the elections they will not be able to buy their votes.”

Prices per vote varied from one area to another, I was told over lunch. There are also differing methods used by the vote buying candidates to secure they get what they pay for. In some parts of Northern Luzon, a vote may cost 500 pesos. To make sure the voter delivers his or her vote, the candidates send armed goons and threaten to kill those who vote for the wrong person. The criminal schemes are possible because the secrecy of the ballot is not safeguarded. In the antiquated Philippine voting system, the voters write all the names of the candidates they support onto the ballot sheet. This opens space for hidden clues and signals as to the person who filled the ballot.

As long as the antiquated system of voting prevails, cheating (and with it killings) will continue at election time. There seems to be a majority in the Philippine political class who doesn’t care about this malpractice. Otherwise, they would have reformed the electoral system many, many years ago.

Technorati Tags: philippines, local government, vote buying, elections