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SEAMEO INNOTECH
Commonwealth, Diliman, Quezon City
17 September 2008
delivered by
LEILA M. DE LIMA
Chairperson, Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines
Good morning!
The Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines and Task Force 2010 welcome all of you to this forum, Ensuring the Right to Electoral Participation: Giving Access to Vulnerable Sectors in 2010. We thank all of our guests and participants for honoring our invitation to attend this event. Salamat sa inyong pagdalo at paglalaan ng panahon para sa proyektong ito.
Ngayong araw, pagtutuunan natin ng pansin ang isang napakahalagang karapatang pantao: ang karapatang bumoto . Suffrage, derived from the Latin word suffragium, has been defined as “the right to vote in the election of officers chosen by the people and in the determination of questions submitted to the people.” Simply put, suffrage is the right to vote. Napakahalaga ng karapatang ito dahil dito nakasalalay ang pag-abot at pagkilala sa iba pang karapatang pantao. This right, in turn, is related to an even more fundamental right: the right to self-determination.
It was once said that “The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A thing which is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing” (Saint Thomas Aquinas). This is the very essence of the right to self-determination.
The international community has recognized this right as the most fundamental of human rights, from which the enjoyment and realization of every other human right depends. Proof of this lofty status lies in the fact that – once the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted and the Commission on Human Rights, the premier human rights intergovernmental body within the United Nations, set out to translate its principles into international treaties that protected specific rights – the General Assembly, in 1966, adopted the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (IESCR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR); the very first Article of each covenant being virtually identical. They both declared that:
All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.
However, a quick survey of the world we live in today teaches us that this right – far from being a truly and fully realized principle – still remains more of a pipe dream than anything else.
There are so many things in this world that are beyond our control; things and events that affect our capacity to direct our own actions. We have, for instance, no control over the prices of oil in the international market; we have virtually no control over the outbreak of armed conflict within and without our country; we have no control over the financial crisis taking place halfway around the world, which will probably directly or indirectly affect our own economy in one way or another.
Most importantly still, in our system of government, the ordinary individual does not have a direct say in the running of the State. That power – the power to act or not to act in behalf of the State – belongs to a select few. Ang karaniwang tao ay walang kapangyarihan na direktang makialam sa pagpapatakbo ng ating pamahalaan.
It does not take an expert in political theory to note the apparent paradox. If, as declared by the UDHR, “all members of the human family” have “equal and inalienable rights,” and if, as declared by both the IESCR and the ICCPR, one of those rights is the right to self-determination, what, then, justifies the continued existence of representative forms of government such as ours? On what basis does the power of a few to rule over a whole nation stand? Kung lahat tayo ay pantay-pantay, bakit may iilan na nasa kapangyarihan, na siyang mga nagdedesisyon patungkol sa pamamahala ng bayan?
The answer is a concept that could be traced back to the mid 17 th century: the social contract theory, under which people give up or surrender some rights to a government – a part of their right to self-determination – in order to preserve the social order. In other words, the right of the few to govern a multitude is derived from the consent of the governed.
Consent. Pahintulot. Kung maaalala ninyo, sa ilalim ng ating Batas Sibil, upang makapagbigay ang isang tao ng kanyang pahintulot, kailangan, unang-una, ay may kapasidad siyang ibigay ito. Kung wala siyang kapasidad, maaaring mapawalang-bisa ang pahintulot na kanyang ibinigay . Under the law, the age of consent is eighteen years old. It is also the basic requirement to be able to vote. However, interestingly, the act of voting is not the act of giving consent. Our consent to this social contract is already impliedly given from the moment we are born. A person cannot deny liability under Philippine laws by saying that he did not consent to the social contract because he has never cast a vote for or against the incumbent.
When we vote, we do not give consent; we assert our right to participate in the governance of the State.
Furthermore, once we’ve cast our vote, our work for the next several years is done. In this system of government called democracy, the ordinary citizen has a once every six years opportunity of casting his or her vote for the Chief Executive of the nation; a once every three years chance of choosing the people who shall wield, among others, the purse-string power of the State. We can’t even control what the people we elect will do once in office.
Unfortunately, our history suggests that Philippine elections are held – not so much as to encourage people’s participation, to hear their voice, or to have them weigh in on the governance of the country – as to get a few powerful and influential individuals elected into power. For as long as there are enough people casting their votes to provide a semblance of legitimacy to an election, full electoral participation was never truly encouraged or even sought to be facilitated.
Admittedly, elections in the Philippines are far from perfect. Aside from reports of irregularities in relation to vote-buying and other forms of election fraud, we have this issue of disenfranchisement to contend with.
According to the statistics gathered by the Records and Statistics Division of the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) and the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB), the May 2007 elections was decided by the votes cast by a mere 36.58% of the entire population (32.40M actually voted out of the estimated 88.57 total population), or a mere 73.11% of the total number of registered voters. Unfortunately, because there is no statistics available to account for the voting-aged population as of the May 2007 elections, we cannot even account for those who are eligible to vote but were not able to register.
This is the problem that the Commission aims to focus on today. This Forum intends to identify the numerous situational and physical constraints that contribute to the disenfranchisement of vulnerable sectors.
Given the state of our political landscape, some might raise the question of why the Commission on Human Rights is weighing in on the 2010 elections. Lest the Commission be accused, suspected of or perceived as infringing into the authority of the Commission on Elections, or of having any other insalubrious political motive, let it be put on record that the CHRP’s interest in the upcoming national elections is one thing, and one thing only: to ensure that the fundamental right to participatory government, as recognized by our Constitution and the UDHR, is fully promoted and realized.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Article 21 states:
The UDHR speaks of universal and free suffrage. However, this right is not fully enforced for millions of Filipinos. The Commission has identified some of the most consistently disenfranchised, or the most vulnerable groups in the country:
The youth sector, in recent years, has been one of the sectors most enthusiastic about exercising their right to suffrage. In fact, leading up to the May 2001 elections, Akbayan-Youth, in behalf of allegedly around 4M youth who failed to register during the regular registration period, petitioned the Supreme Court to direct the COMELEC to conduct a special registration of new voters. For the 2008 elections, it has been reported that many youth organizations have begun pushing their plans for voters’ registration and first-time voters’ education. This Forum is one of the Commission’s ways of showing support for these plans.
Because of the obvious difficulties presented by their plight as victims of internal armed conflict, the internally displaced population also deserves special attention. In fact, according to the Records and Statistics Division of the COMELEC, Region XII – which is composed of North Cotabato , Sarangani, South Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat – registered the second lowest voter turn-out during for the May 2007 elections, with only 67.9% of the registered voters actually voting.
The government identifies 110 IP groups. Population estimates
range from 6.5 million for the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), 7.5 million for the Kalipunan ng Katutubong Mamamayan ng Pilipinas (KAMP) to more than 12 million for the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), or between 10 and 15 percent of the total national population. The indigenous communities were also singled out as beneficiaries of this Forum as part of the Commission’s continuing effort:
According to the statistics of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP), the number of individuals detained without a sentence comprise about 95% of the total jail population. This means, that, without the proper mechanism allowing these detainees to exercise their right to vote, they are being effectively disenfranchised without due process of law.
During the May 2007 elections, disabled voters reportedly decried lack of facilities in the polling places. Some found themselves assigned to precincts located at the third floor. This lack of handicapped-friendly facilities in the polling places discourages some voters. Admittedly, there is no specific provision providing for a convenient place for handicapped voters.
The same problems basically confront our elderly voters. According to the NSO Population and Housing Census of 2000, there are about 4.6M Filipinos aged 60 years old and above. About 5.4% live alone. 7.21% have some form of disability. Low vision is the most common. Others suffer from partial to total blindness. Interestingly, however, their demographic are still quite active in the labor force. In fact, more than 57% are gainfully employed, mostly as farmers, forestry workers or fishermen, laborers and unskilled workers. Therefore, this is another vulnerable sector identified as deserving the Commission’s aid in promoting and protecting their right of suffrage.
It must be emphasized that these groups so far identified do not exhaust all the sectors that are vulnerable to disenfranchisement. There are other sectors - such as the Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) - that also deserve attention. Their needs will hopefully be addressed in similar future fora.
The present forum shall employ the Rights-based Approach to Achieving Full Political Participation in 2010, which is characterized by:
Consistent with this Rights-based Approach, the objectives of the one day forum include:
In closing, allow me to point out that a democratic representative form of government has its built-in problems. However, as Winston Churchill once said, “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
Whatever may be wrong with our system of government, all of us present here today have the opportunity to correct some of its more insidious problems. Corruption and impunity, being forms of human rights violations on so many levels, is the evil that the Commission ultimately hopes to eradicate. Through the proper exercise of the right of suffrage as an external sanction – or a mechanism through which accountability in governance could be realized and effectively institutionalized by rewarding or punishing the incumbent government on its actions while in office through the giving or withdrawal of support in subsequent elections – we could begin the fight against corruption and the culture of impunity prevalent in our country.
In this regard, the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines seeks your aid and commitment. As Margaret Mead once said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
That is all. Thank you once again for honoring our invitation, and for participating and supporting our project.
Good morning and a very productive forum to everyone!Nachura, A. Outline Reviewer in Political Law, p. 364.
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/metro/view_article.php?article_id=65850.