The US Elections

The recent US midterm elections went thru without a hitch. The winners were ecstatic and the losers reflected on what went wrong. The conduct of the elections went so smoothly that it did not cause even a ripple of protestation from any quarters. That is the beauty of americana that is hardly discernible unless viewed against the backdrop of elections of other countries.

The elections in the Philippines is a study of contrasts. There was massive cheating at the polling places , at the comelec, and at the electoral tribunal or the congress. Vote counting is an exercise of adding votes to the favored candidate and diminishing count of the unlucky one. Who determines the lucky candidate is usually the incumbent at the top of the heirachcy, manipulating the process with the use of the military and the police. The unfavored candidate has only a chinaman's chance of winning, and if he does win, end up dead in the back alleys somewhere. There is nothing salient about the electoral process in the Philippines except the fact that whoever is the incumbent dictates the manner that process is executed. That essentially defines dictators. The Philippines prides itself as a democracy - dictator democracy, that is.