Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Unrealistic Expectations

The Philippine Star has a News Feature that discusses why the presence of Max Soliven's name in the voting list in San Juan belied the COMELEC's claim that it has cleansed the country's voting list. The Philippine Star may be correct in their allegation, but if their only proof is the presence of Mr. Soliven's name in the voting list, then they should have tried harder to come up with more and better examples.

How can you expect the COMELEC to be able to de-list Mr. Soliven's name from the voting list when he died just 6 months ago (November 24). Are death certificates forwarded to the COMELEC so they can de-list them from the voting list automatically? It is SOP for the COMELEC to remove the name of a person from the voter's list if they fail to vote for two straight elections. Mr. Soliven, has only failed to do so this year, if the SOP stands and Chairman Abalos does not order the delisting of Mr. Soliven's name, his name should still appear in the voter's list for the 2010 Presidential elections.

Of course, the ideal scenario would be the delisting of a person's name upon death, but failing that, the SOP being done is the best compromise between delisting people automatically after failing to vote for one election and necessitating a lot of re-registrations and the delisting of people who are not able to or are unwilling to vote again.

Yes, we should expect the COMELEC to do their job as effectively and as efficiently as possible, but let us not expect them to do things they are not equipped to do.

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