Press Release
March 18, 2009

Transcript of Sen. Richard J. Gordon's address to FOCAP:
Meeting the test of political credibility

I welcome the opportunity to address again the foreign correspondents community in our country. And I thank you for your abiding interest in Philippine affairs amidst the giant tsunami engulfing the world today.

Gaby Tabañar told me that I should be prepared to answer questions on a wide range of issues and concerns. I'd be happy to address those issues in the Q and A after my remarks.

Before we do so, however, I would like to place in perspective recent developments and looming challenges before our country today. Beyond the daily headlines that dominate the media, I think there are larger issues at stake here. And this might help you better understand where we Filipinos are coming from and where we are headed.

At this particular period in history, I believe the Philippines presents to the world a somewhat different picture from the one that used to be described by foreign observers as "a jeepney economy", "a damaged culture" or, most woundingly, as "the sick man of Asia." We still have a full baggage of problems to confront, but the world no longer sees us only in caricature. Beyond the stories of disasters and scandals, the world is also beginning to read and hear about the difference we make as an emerging economy as key member of ASEAN and as the 13th largest nation in the world.

I would like to discuss here two major efforts and reform that bear on the future of our nation and the contribution that we can make to the world. The first is the automation of elections starting next year, which to us Filipinos, believe it or not, will be like the introduction of a new invention of a new medical cure; and the second concerns eternal efforts to raise the standard of integrity in our public in the face of so many corruption scandals that have blighted the nation's international reputation.

Automated 2010 Elections

To the foreign journalists among you, it must seem amazing that it is only now - in the closing years of the first decade of the 21st century --that we Filipinos will automate or computerize our election system. It is doubly amazing that we are doing so as the oldest democracy in Asia!

While other countries began to automate their elections as early as the seventies, we have persisted in the manual system of voting and canvassing votes since 1946. For reasons that are truly bewildering, we deferred, we toyed, we blocked every proposal for the automation of our election system through the years. We have preferred the kilometric ballot and the month-long count of election results to the speedy casting and counting of votes enabled by modern technology.

Even after we had passed our first automated election law 12 years ago, some still sought to defer, and succeeded, in delaying the change.

Now, at long last, the system is fated for change.

We are not just talking here about an automated election law - we did that two years ago.

We are talking about implementing the law in national elections in 2010.

We've appropriated the money - P11.3 billion to be exact. And the ball is now in hands of the Commission on Elections to press full-court all the way up to the balloting in May next year.

Some of you will ask: Why is this so important to us Filipinos?

If you ever had to wait two months for the result of your national elections, or watch election protests go on until the next elections, you will understand why.

The term may seem extravagant, but to us this is nothing less than a paradigm shift in our electoral processes. It will bring closure to electoral contest in a way that all Filipino generations had not known throughout their lifetimes. For the first time we will hold elections that are truly free, speedy and credible.

If the first step to reinventing government is to ensure the sanctity of the ballot, this system change makes that possible. Remember that every time we hold elections in this country, the President of the Philippines, or the governor, or the mayor will hold a chain around his neck and will be dragging it for the next full term, because the others would say they were cheated or they were robbed. There are only two kinds of people in this country�one who won and the other one who was cheated, there are no losers.

In writing our automated election law, we in Congress took care to mandate the following essential features for the new election system: 1. It must have voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) so that voters can see their votes as cast so that they can be recorded accurately. 2. It must be secured against unauthorized access. In fact it will have a source code. 3. It must be accurate in recording and reading the votes, tabulating, consolidating/canvassing, electronically transmitting and storing the results. 4. It must be accessible to illiterates and disabled voters. 5. It must provide for a continuity plan in the event of a systems breakdown. The key benefits and advantages of the system are clear: 1. Automated elections will result to faster election results. What used to take two months will now take, at most, a day. Political contests will not drag on as in the past. Nobody will have time to call anybody while the count is being made.. 2. It will stop wholesale cheating like "Dagdag Bawas", which has to do with massive changing of election returns. 3. The system is technology neutral. We did not design it for a particular company. We won't be locked into any technology at present, but rather remain open to more modern technologies as they are developed and tested in future. 4. Only systems with demonstrated capability will be used. 5. It provides for automatic random manual audit. For all these safety measures and benefits, there are nonetheless critics of the automated election system. Some are critical because their own technical and business proposals were not adopted. This is very common in the Philippines, every time somebody wins the bid, somebody was robbed also, they did not win, they say there is cheating. Others are just plain skeptical about entrusting our balloting to machines. And then there are those who clearly see advantages in keeping the old system in place.

The fact is there is no perfect, foolproof automated or electronic election system in the world today. Even the US must still live with less than perfect technology at this point.

You remember the saying, "the best is the enemy of the good." This is the lesson presented us here, demanding perfection from any automated system only serves to prevent us from achieving something good in our public life.

I, therefore, am truly glad that we finally have the political maturity to effect this change in election management in our country.

Once implemented, the automated election system will be a game-changer in Philippine politics.

It will change the way we vote.

It will change the way we count votes.

It will change the way elections are decided.

It will also change the way our politicians cheat in our elections. At least we will be beating those who already have a PhD in manual voting.

Even the Comelec will experience a welcome change. Instead of being fixated on policing the balloting and canvassing, it can turn part of its attention to the people who were killed and nothing is heard from them afterwards. I think about 127 people were killed in the last elections, you never heard justice for these people afterwards because they are busy conducting protest tallies.

One act of reform, of course, will not transform our electoral system overnight. The important thing, however, is that the reform process will now start. In years to come, we will have the opportunity to continue improving the system.

With this change, public trust in our electoral processes can be nurtured again. And our credibility as a democratic society will be enhanced.

That last point cannot be overemphasized over the past three decades we have met a serious problem of credibility before the world. At the time of the Cold War, our credentials as an independent nation were questioned because of our closeness to the US. In the years of Martial Law, our status as a democratic society was impaired. In the tumultuous years after EDSA, there were questions whether we Filipinos were governable. And at the height of the Asian economic crisis, there were great questions about the viability of our economy. Now we are in the process of regaining our credibility in the world. Through the improved management and performance of our economy and the contribution that our workers are making in the global economy, we are succeeding in establishing economic credibility for the nation. This has been reinforced by the seeming calm and poise with which we are meeting the current global crisis.

This we must match in the area of politics and governance. Ensuring free, speedy and credible elections in 2010 is one test of our political credibility. Meeting the challenge of corruption and transparency in governance is another.

Corruption and Public Integrity As a public servant, I squirm whenever I read about our being ranked among the most corrupt countries in the world by international institutions and risk consultancy agencies. And it is frustrating because we see this seemingly confirmed repeatedly by the parade of scandals in our public life.

To some of us, this means that we are facing a crisis of corruption in our country today. And we either declare war against the menace or we will lose the fight for a dynamic economy, for strong and honest government, and for real modernization and development in our country.

All countries - including the most advanced nations - have lived through their own crises of corruption before they surmounted them and attained full development. All had to battle grafters, tax evaders, mafias, robber barons, dirty politics, corrupt judges and dishonest bureaucracies to achieve modernization.

We, too, must live through this for our own national modernization.

The good news I submit is that this battle against corruption has begun. You can see it in the rising level of public outrage against the many scandals that have wracked our public life - from the NBN-ZTE scandal, to the fertilizer fund mess, or to the rigging of public works bidding, to the billion-peso Legacy scam. You see it in the way public watchdog groups and whistleblowers are emerging to expose misdeeds in government. You see it in the way the media are focusing on corruption cases. You see it in the way international institutions like the World Bank are being drawn into the battle. And you see it in the number of inquiries that the Senate is conducting on various anomalies in our public life. Admittedly, there is much public cynicism about the efficacy of fighting corruption in our country. People believe that it cannot be rooted out. That whoever is in power does it. That every government agency is infested. And that since everybody does it, there's nothing to be done. But something new is happening now. People are being called to account for their misdeeds in public office. Many are protesting that not everybody does it, and they shouldn't be lumped together with those who malverse public money or take bribes. Investigations of public misconduct are reaching into the corridors of power - including of all things the offices of public prosecutors and the ombudsman, who are supposed to lead the fight against corruption. To this sense of public empowerment against corruption I believe we in the Senate - particularly the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee - have contributed in no small way through more focused and resolute inquiries into matters of public concern. We have unraveled the tentacles of corruption in some key government departments and agencies. We have tracked down individuals who had eluded the Senate in the past. We have shown the costs of perjured testimony before the chamber. And we have come up with committee reports for public prosecutors to act on and legislators to use as basis for remedial legislation. The Blue Ribbon Committee, which just made a report, has submitted action bills in Congress for the first time in history. For the first time we have filed cases for perjury as well as avoidance to lawful summons. And in the next report that I am going to be making before the end of the month, this will be the same procedure. We are going to come up with the necessary recommendations and perhaps serve the evidence on the silver platter to the ombudsman.

All these developments are just a start, of course. And they are a long way from slaying the dragon of corruption. Realistically, we all know that the dragon's power and influence reaches much, much deeper into every branch of government - and it will take much, much more before the culture will change. It doesn't help that the President appointed the classmate of the First Gentleman to the post of ombudsman of our country. It doesn't help that the wolf packs infesting the bureaucracy are led by individuals who have very strong connections. It doesn't help when malefactors in government are rewarded with juicy appointments in government in spite of public knowledge of their involvement in corrupt activities. Mr. Bolante was promoted to GSIS. His co-conspirator was also promoted after taking them out from the Department of Agriculture and promoted to high office in GSIS. And the assistant secretary was promoted to undersecretary. And today, you've all read in the papers, that the gentleman who was supposed to have given P500,000 to a complete stranger, Mr. Lozada, is now appointed to the SEC. It doesn't help that our justice department, our equivalent of the attorney general, has become an oxymoron from being too self-serving to partisan ends. We can only fix the problem by relentlessly facing it. What Robert Kennedy said about starting a ripple applies here. He said that each time people stand up for an ideal or strike out against misdeeds, they send forth "a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of resistance." Our campaign against corruption has started this ripple of hope. This is the way real reform comes to be - in people taking the initiative for change in their respective ways, and then in their joining together to achieve the vision of what can be.

Architecture of Reform

The automation of our election system and the campaign against corruption form part of the larger architecture of reform that we need to truly modernize and move forward. Combined with other reforms that are equally necessary this should help in shoring up to the credibility of our democracy and constitutional government.

Realistically, however, these are just steps toward a larger goal. To place things in perspective, an automated election system sets up the stage for credible elections. It does not guarantee us credible candidates. We should have no illusions that automated elections will have an automatic transformational effect on our politics. When we hear one candidate say that you should have a billion pesos to spend before you should run for President, we know that there is something wrong with our politics, if not in that candidate. When we see opinion surveys being manipulated this early to condition people's minds and their preferences, we know that democracy is being derailed. When would-be candidates at this time spend millions advertising themselves, violating the spirit of the law to improve their survey ratings, we see our electioneering laws being shamelessly scorned before our very eyes. When little attention is paid to performance, achievements and qualifications for high office, we are reducing our electoral politics to the common denominator of money.

Similarly, we should entertain no illusions that one season of jousting with corruption will suffice to break down the culture of corruption in our country. It has to be sustained. The cancer is deeply entrenched in our government bureaucracy and public life. And the other sectors of society contribute to the problem by playing along with it or even abetting it.

Although graft and corruption is a favorite issue in every electoral campaign in our country, few have the stamina to really grapple with it. Most love to orate about it, to pretend at asking questions in a legislative inquiry..

I can remember the quotation made by Mr. William Howard Taft when he was sent here to ask about the status of Filipinos, what to do with them, because they had just taken over a colony from Spain. And Mr. Taft after going to the country said,

"The Filipinos are ignorant and superstitious. And the very few that had any education that deserves the name are but a few politicians who had nothing but their personal interest to gratify and no moral stamina whatsoever."

I think we can still say that about our politicians, I think we can still say that about our media, I think we can still say that about the military, about the church, about practically every institution in our country that has gotten tired and had lost their stamina to wrestle to the very powerful in our country. However, I dare say, these people are not unbeatable.

Real reform to root out corruption must install effective oversight and accountability. Batting corruption should not stop at just making the expos�. The work does not stop until the grafter is removed from office and goes to jail. It doesn't help when the President pardons the highest official in the land without even spending a day in formal prison.

To restore our people's trust in the government, I have always maintained we need not just a change in laws but a change in men, in our attitudes, in our own being. Public officials - elected and appointed alike -- have to believe that public office is really a public trust. It is not to be discharged freely, without scruples. It is vested with responsibility to the public good. This view will not find ready support from the cynics among us. But I think that there are those of us who believe that something finer is possible in our public life. No one expressed better than Theodore Roosevelt who declared:

"No republic can permanently endure when its politics are corrupt and base...we can afford to differ on the currency, the tariff, and foreign policy, but we cannot afford to differ on the question of honesty. There is a soul in the community, a soul in the nation, just exactly as there is a soul in the individual; and exactly as the individual hopelessly mars himself if he lets his conscience be dulled by the constant repetition of unworthy acts, so the nation will hopelessly blunt the popular conscience if it permits its public men continually to do acts which the nation in its heart of hearts knows are acts which cast discredit upon our whole public life."

The words could not be more apt for this period of challenge we are facing now. This is a time of soul-searching for nations. The crisis gripping economies is a crisis of governance as well. And the one word that analysts say is missing is TRUST.

When experts say that economies need trust in order to recover their bearings and grow again, we can say the same about governments today. To govern and lead effectively, governments must have the people's trust. To have trust, the system as a whole needs to be imbued with shared values and shared goals.

In a word, we need to find the soul of our national community - and seek it in the government we elect and the leaders we follow.

Thank you all very much.

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