By Ephraim Aguilar
Inquirer Southern Luzon
INQUIRER.net
LEGAZPI CITY—LIKE IT WAS New Year’s Eve, people stayed up late on the streets a night before Monday’s elections in many villages in the rural town of Pandan in the neighboring island-province of Catanduanes.
They were waiting for what is locally called “paipit (insertion)” or “gracia (blessing)” from politicians running for public office.
When Gerry Rubio found P2,120—two P1,000 bills, one P100 bill, and one P20 bill—on his doorstep at Our Lady’s Village in Virac town early Monday, he knew what to do. The money came from certain candidates for governor, congressman and a party-list group.
“The P2,120 I unwillingly received today will be millions worth of lesson in history. I will preserve this,” said Rubio, who vowed not to spend the money in exchange for his sacred vote.
He said he would put the bills under the glass cover of his office table. “This will be my contribution to history.”
Cigarette boxes
Inasmuch as it is shameful that massive vote-buying happens in his home province, it has to be exposed, he said.
Rubio, the public relations officer of Catanduanes State Colleges, is a volunteer of Pagbabago! (People’s Movement for Change), a multisectoral group that advocates clean and honest elections.
In Catanduanes, distribution of vote-buying money started at around 7:30 p.m. on Sunday till early Monday before the voting precincts open.
“Packs of money are sleekly delivered to homes. They are stapled with the candidates’ sample ballots,” Rubio said.
Others are brought to the houses of local leaders where people line up until dawn.
“Bundles of cash here are loaded in cigarette boxes. Politicians form a task force that segregates the money for stapling,” Rubio said.
He noted some enraged voters who will not pick a candidate if they do not receive anything. “These are the voters without backbone. But I believe there are still well-meaning people in our island who value values.”
In Masbate, a perennial election hot spot, every voter is paid at least P1,000, said Pagbabago-Bicol spokesperson Fr. Remar Soliza.
On Ticao Island in the same province, Soliza said voters would receive as much as P3,000 each from local mayoral candidates.
The group reported that supposed supporters of an incumbent congressman gave out P300 per voter.
In Milaor town in Camarines Sur, the same amount was distributed by the camp of another congressional candidate.
“By all indications this is also happening in all provinces in the region, where patronage and traditional politics is the norm,” Soliza said.
“We encourage voters to report such acts as well as other activities that undermine their votes. When [vote-buying] candidates come to power, they will definitely ransack the people’s coffers to defray their campaign expenses,” he said.
Busy banks
Banks this week had a barrage of transaction requests to convert millions of pesos into smaller bills, a bank teller in Bicol, who refused to be named for security reason, told the Inquirer.
The teller said that since last week, even nonclients or those without accounts had visited the bank to encash a P500,000-check for P100 bills.
“I would have up to five clients asking us to break down big amounts. It is unusual for an ordinary work day,” the teller said.
Rubio said vote-buying is an indication of flawed governance in the Philippines. “Something is acutely wrong with our political system. Why do they have to resort to cheating in all forms, buy votes, to win a public servant’s seat?” he said in a phone interview.
“And the electorates who patronize this dirty scheme are part of the rotten system.”
Rubio said vote-buying is endemic in a culture that regards electoral posts as “moneymaking machines.”
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