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9 February 2010
Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Makati City
by
LEILA M. DE LIMA
Chairperson
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Introduction
Justice Teresita Dy-Liaco Flores, our foreign partners and guests, Justice Paul H. Anderson, Atty. John Hardin Young, Ms. Marie Rendon of USAID, Ms. Beverly Hagedorn Thakur of IFES, Scot Ciment, Esq., our government partners from the Commission on Elections, our friends from Libertas, Attys. Roberto Eugenio T. Cadiz and Luie Tito F. Guia, and Vince Yambao, free election advocates, election law practitioners, fellow human rights advocates, and friends, good afternoon.
Normally, on invitations to purely Election Law engagements, I apologetically beg off. Though I had built my legal career upon an election law practice, I am now on hiatus from my bread and butter. Save for a few unusually loyal clients who continue to deal with my law office associates, I have lost virtually all of my clients to a very small and intimate roster of election law practitioners, such as yourselves. Since assuming my role in the Commission on Human Rights, I have become a bona fide, genuine and full-time... novice and neophyte of human rights advocacy. As for my standing in Election Law circles, I had been reduced to an unemployed and, thus, a retired non-entity.
May 2010: An Epic Advance or A Historic Disaster
And yet the invitations to speak on Election Law continue to hound a retiree from the practice. I would have sternly declined today's event, despite the stigma of my previous career that insists on attaching itself to me, had it not been for one crucial characteristic of this election year – it stands to become a seminal moment for Philippine elections. 2010 may very well be an epic and historic leap forward in protecting and promoting a genuine and functional exercise of suffrage, or a monumental, equally historic, and very expensive disaster.
It is the history-defining quality of the first nationwide national and local automation of elections that dwarfs my only acceptable interest – which of course, is only human rights. The word automation stands larger in the public consciousness than the possible impact that the 2010 elections may have from a human rights perspective. The speed, the accuracy and the relatively instantaneous revelation of results have captured the imagination of the people.
Automation: More Than Just Ballot-Counting
Yet no one can deny that the significance of this year's elections surpasses speed, accuracy and relatively instantaneous revelation of results. Automation changes the game at so many levels.
Automation and Election Violations
The predicted brevity of the counting process should eliminate protracted intermediate steps which traditionally expose the integrity of the election to an array of devious methods of producing fraud. The time frame for physically possessing ballots before they are counted at the precinct level is greatly reduced, thereby reducing as well the time frame to launch possible threats to the safety of election workers, limiting the opportunity to steal and stuff ballot boxes, or to add or remove zeros or otherwise alter the tallies.
Automation and Election Law Practice
The brevity of the process has also left lawyers scrambling to understand the procedure of automation, how the 2010 elections changes the nature and extent of legal services, and naturally, where exactly in the process your professional skill required in order to earn a living. In fact, the prospects of a diminished business post-automated elections have made election law practitioners rabid yet subtle critics of automation.
Automation and Human Rights
Finally, brevity also, in the ideal scenario, has an undeniable, though indirect, impact on the human rights facet to the electoral process. After all, brevity, per se, is not what makes an election an effective political exercise. Neither is it the instantaneous outcome, but that which should come hand in hand with both – accuracy. An accurate election result can only be one that truly reflects the will of the people.
As it should be, the right of suffrage does not exist independently of the right to participate in government through the right of representation. And representation, as an integral link in the chain emanating from the suffrage, can only be genuine when our electoral process accurately captures the intention and will of each individual voter. This is the only way to ensure that the periodic renewal of our democratic system renders our government subservient and loyal to the People.
The automation of elections, thus, is a very intriguing modification. In its most hopeful outcome, the 2010 elections should set the stage for not just strengthening, but consolidating, galvanizing an otherwise frail connection between voting constituents and the public representatives installed into office. It is intriguing because the possible, major impact of automation on public accountability of elective officials to their constituents looms rather largely. It is intriguing because it changes the complexion, the value of an individual vote, the value of the opinions and concerns of individual voters, it changes expectations that people have of elective officials, even at the very top of the national political hierarchy. So many things then become possible with clean, honest and accurately tabulated elections.
Automation: Does it Truly Change the Game?
When the adage goes, “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” do we now find ourselves at the cusp of a brand of change that does not ironically stifle us into our usual election inertia? Will the May 2010 polls be truly historic in the change may bring? Or will it be another election like any other the world over where change is a catch-word, but not a measurable standard? Or worse, will it be the same unsettling drama we experience every three years, except in that it will be an automated drama?
Attaining the ideal electoral process just by implementing automation is overly simplistic, if not outrightly unrealistic. Automation is only a component of the entire electoral process. It is a significant one, wherein it greatly affects many facets of the process, but it is not the only one.
Moreover, the looming implementation of the automated elections act should place us on guard against the many scenarios where automation may fail to deliver this messianic promise of the freest and cleanest elections. We face a a remote, but still-dangerous possibility of a failed election. We face logistical challenges with the IT systems to be installed throughout the country. Training and instruction of public school teachers and other election-day volunteers remain incomplete. The final form of the automated election ballot has been the subject of much revision. And these are just the problems that precede the automated elections. There are concerns about hardware failure, hacking, installation of redundancies to overcome technical failures.
The ideal election will not land on our laps, with or without automation, and we must take it with our toil and our vigilance.
Automation and Evolving Threats
The process of elections is a complex one, which is generally unfortunate, save for election practitioners, not necessarily lawyers, who find this a very fortunate and rewarding circumstance. How else could I have made a career out of election law if the process was straightforward, cut and dry? Completely clean and fraud-free elections are an anathema to election trial practice.
Just as election practitioners everywhere are studying the changing landscape of the practice, you should expect that the same insidious forces, that perpetrate every conceivable violation against the free exercise of suffrage and the integrity of our elections, have not miraculously vanished with the onset of automation. They are still present, they still have the resources to make a mockery of our electoral process. And just like those of us present here today, they too are assiduously studying the impact of automation, but on schemes to distort the electoral outcome. At stake, yet again, is the integrity of our elections.
Automation and Adjudication
Our theme today, on adjudicating disputes in automated elections, underscores precisely the mechanisms, particularly remedial mechanisms, for guarding this integrity. In the climate of automation, adjudication of disputes too will change in strategy, in timing, in many other aspects, which our distinguished guests will elaborate on. (I, the retiree, respectfully defer to them.) But one thing will not change, and that is, its integral function in securing the sanctity of our elections.
Even in fair elections, disputes are not precluded as errors may occur, and thus, the procedures for adjudication supplement a vast set of preventive steps, all of which, forming a broad mechanism for guarding election integrity. Adjudication is, and remains, one of many important tools for electoral integrity.
But what about unfair elections, those tainted with bribery, violence, vote-buying, intimidation, murders, fraud and yes, even terrorism? Automation definitely abridges time frames in the counting process, definitely reduces chances of election violations. However, it does not insulate the entire electoral process from unfair, illegal or criminal acts that subvert the spirit of the elections.
The Role of Lawyers in Free Elections
As lawyers, as election practitioners, your role extends far beyond understanding the changing nuances of the adjudicatory process in Philippine elections. It extends farther than advocating for a client cum candidate. It extends much, much further than winning in electoral adjudication. Your role comes with the duty not only to seek and find remedy for mere errors, but with the duty to oppose unfair elections, or those tainted with anomaly, coercion, bribery, violence, vote-buying, intimidation, murder, fraud and terrorism, wherever these violations may now insert themselves in the automated electoral process.
Ultimately, your role is hardly distinguishable from that of the rest of every upstanding citizen, lawyer or otherwise. By your profession and more importantly, by your citizenship, you, too, are tasked, just as everyone else is, to guard the People's right, their human right, to an election characterized by honesty, integrity and sanctity. You are tasked to guard that frail link of accountability between the elected officials and the voting public, by ensuring fair and honest elections. Finally, you are tasked to ensure that fair and free elections pave the way for the entry of a new government leadership that values the timeless ideals of our democracy and human rights.
It seem far-fetched, doesn't it? How the role of a competent election practitioner redounds ultimately to human rights for all people. But human rights permeates all aspects of human activity and enterprise, including suffrage.
This is why we are here today, and this is why many Filipino legal professionals must continue to adequately prepare for the impending and historic elections of this year. Every untainted and upstanding, individual effort, as a lawyer, as voter, as a citizen, in the end, adds up to favor our human rights. I wish you all good luck in the coming election season. May the discourses in today's gathering aid you in our common quest for a truly historic election.