If this writer can rewrite election laws, here are what I would posit for fair elections in the future. We have an obsolete election law that was enacted by the defunct rubberstamp parliament and had been found by experts as bearing many loopholes. The need to amend the law to be responsive to the changing times had long been overdue. Unfortunately, congress does not care to give a damn to a legislation that will eventually jeopardize their fate in future elections.

Politicians had already been adept with the obsolete provisions of the law and had to some extent mastered the ways to subvert the law for their own vested ends. Changing the provisions to plug the loopholes would surely pose a great problem for politicians in their future electoral bids. That makes acting on the proposed amendments a suicidal adventure for lawmakers to take up. Revising the law to weed out the loopholes would result in more difficult political future for many politicians.

One problem affecting Philippine elections is the great disparity between rich and poor candidates in terms of exposure. Only those who can afford to pay the high cost of political advertisements are able to reach the masses. The poor ones had to be contented with few campaign materials that can hardly be recognized in poster areas that are plastered with those materials of the rich candidates. Not even the Fair Elections Act mattered in any way to level the playing field as those candidates who have the resources dominated the areas with gusto.

It would be best to change the law by imposing a total ban on campaign posters and in lieu therefor, the Comelec shall exercise full regulation by posting the names of qualified candidates in equal sizes and similar design in designated common poster areas. The same thing must be done on radio and television advertisements.

It must be the Comelec that will broadcast the names, qualifications and platforms or advocacy of each candidate. With the Comelec doing the posting of names of candidates, equality in space and a level playing field may at least be approximated. If the Comelec can do that under a new revision of the election law, we can somehow hope that there is a level playing field that can pave for a level playing field.

But the strongest influence of all is money, which flooded the localities for local elective posts. While many people give the best explications to justify the use of money to buy votes, the prohibited act is still deemed evil no matter all the best justification. Government can take full control over vote buying by regulating cash in circulation during the election period and strictly enforcing the law by jailing violators.
comments to alellema@yahoo.com

THE spectacle of Christ’s Transfiguration (cfr. Lk 9,28b-36) teaches us, among other things, that we are meant for a supernatural life, that we need to develop the art of transcending the material and temporal dimensions of our life to enter into the world of the spiritual and the eternal, and that the care we give to our body should be oriented toward the ultimate glory we are supposed to share with God.

We have to develop a taste and even an appetite for the supernatural life with God and of things supernatural in general. In this we have to help one another, because in the end, this is our common ultimate end in life—how to live our life with God, how we can be immersed in God even as we are immersed also in the things of the world.

We have to help one another wean ourselves from the exclusive dependence on the sensible, material and even merely intelligible circumstances of our life. Yes, it’s true that we cannot avoid them, since they are an integral part of our humanity. In fact, we need them. But let’s understand that they are not the be-all and end-all of our life. At best, they are means, tools and occasions to develop our supernatural life with God.

We have to understand also that our supernatural life does not in any way nullify our humanity, and everything related to it—our senses, emotions, our family and professional, social, political life, etc. If anything at all, it promotes these aspects of our life, purifies them and elevates them to the supernatural order of God.

We have to disabuse ourselves from the thinking, now so common in many worldly ideologies and lifestyles, that the supernatural life undermines our humanity. Yes, there might be some awkwardness involved, especially in the beginning, but such problems and difficulties do not detract from the objective necessity we have to develop a supernatural life.

We also have to be more aware of our need to develop and sharpen our sense of transcendence. It is to help us cope with the fullness of the reality that governs us. It is the reality that includes the spiritual which we cannot see and touch because it is not accessible to the senses, and the supernatural which we cannot reach with our own natural powers alone but only with God’s grace, through faith, hope and charity that work on our natural powers.

We have to realize that the sense of transcendence does not mean that we ignore or have no need or simply give little importance to the here and now, to the material and natural dimensions of our life. Rather, we have to realize that our sense of transcendence can only be exercised through these natural dimensions of our life, but we need to go beyond them, not trapped in them.

Lastly, Christ’s Transfiguration also teaches us that our body is meant for eternal life. It may be reduced to dust when we die, but our faith tells us that it will be resurrected at the end of time.

We should subject the body to the dynamics of our spiritual soul that in turn is subject also to the dynamics of faith, hope and charity, or in short, the dynamics of the life of God from whom our soul springs as God’s image and likeness.

Yes, indeed, our body materializes the spiritual love proper to us. The impulses of faith, hope and charity should somehow be expressed in it, in spite of its limitations.