Institutional Presentations
With Ms. Becky Malay of PRRM and Mr. Patrick Patiño of IPD
as moderators, the institutional presentations on the five topics
began.
Presentation of COMELEC Report/Campaigns
and Administration
(See Annex 8 ; PowerPoint
file)
COMELEC Director Jose Tolentino made the first report on Campaigns
and Administration and on the 2001 Elections results. He started
off by giving a brief background on COMELEC and proceeded enumerating
respectively the problems encountered from pre-election to post-election
periods, which have frequently impaired the operations and caused
the subsequent problems in the facilitation of the electoral processes.
Bulk of his succeeding presentation focused on campaign- and
administration-related issues vis a vis RA 9006 also known as
Fair Elections Practices Act. It was promised during the course
of his discussion the elimination of the aforementioned problems
and issues thru the implementation of the automation program.
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Presentation of NAMFREL on Modernization
(See Annex 9)
Mr. Telibert Laoc next presented NAMFREL’s Position Paper
on Election Automation. He discussed matters concerning the vulnerabilities
in our election processes, the declaration why automation is critical
intervention vis a vis RA 8436, the state of automation as to
what has been done at this particular time and the challenges
and action points for the summit. Following the presentation on
the projected gains from the automation program, he concluded
his report by claiming that automation is a correct solution,
a national program and, being such, there is no reason why the
latter should not be supported by the en banc Commission and by
the people and political parties as well. | back
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Presentation of Empowering
Civic Participation in Governance (ECPG) on Party-List Elections (See
Annex 10; PowerPoint
file)
Dr. Agustin Rodriguez of ECPG tackled the third topic of the
Summit, the Party-list Elections. He cited some valuable insights
and observations regarding the implementation of the Party-List
system and rounded up his report by enumerating and at the same
time explaining several proposals for a better party-list system.
He concluded that a lot of problems of the law call not only for
legislative actions and solutions but also for consolidation of
the civil society, and for the latter as well as the marginalized
sectors to engage political parties. | back
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Presentation of the Institute of Popular
Democracy (IPD) on Citizen Participation in Elections
IPD Executive Director, Joel Rocamora, pointed out that electoral
reform is only one of the areas of work undertaken by the Civil
Society that is related to governance. This work, according to
him, is undertaken because people believe that our government
is dominated by a few ruling elites and thus feel they cannot
participate actively in our political life. He added that the
same is done, therefore, to look for allies among reformers within
the government.
He went on by defining Civil Society Participation in Electoral
Reforms as a way to help create structures and processes for electing
good leaders. However, he said that recent political developments
tell us otherwise. It is not enough to participate in elections
like Party-list, as it is only a formula to long-term marginalization.
He explained that what is more and more civil society groups are
beginning to understand is it is necessary to not just participate
in but also to contest elections not only in Party-list but also
in local elections because it is more easy to determine the needs
of good governance in the local than in the national level.
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Presentation of National Institute for
Policy Studies (NIPS) on Strengthening Political Parties and Campaign
Finance (See Annex
11)
The last to present was NIPS Executive Director and lawyer, Chito
Gascon who discussed the key issues about campaign finance reforms
and political party development in the country. Among matters
he strongly noted was that we are in crisis today partly because
our Party System is weak. He characterized the latter as elitist,
personality and patronage based, and vulnerable to vested interests.
Developments, according to him, show that political parties have
lost their relevance to our political life. There does not seem
to be a healthy dynamics between sectoral, grassroots groups and
mainstream parties.
He pointed out further the need to reform our campaign finance
system, which should come as a combination of measures. This package
of reforms include those with respect to money in politics; political
party law that would define the latter’s roles, rights and
responsibilities in our political system; and Anti-turncoatism.
He held that Campaign Finance Reform is essentially a response
to rising costs of campaign and concerns of the role of money
in politics, to reduce the inequities in the resources available
to candidate and reduce the emphasis on fundraising and the influence
and control of vested interest.
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