Voting Rights Abused

In the light of today's election (May 13, 2013- Senatorial, Mayoral, Governor, and Party List elections), I must say that the election had been relatively "peaceful". No news of 'deaths related to elections violence' yet, no news of 'election-related harassment' yet, and no 'winners' yet.

As I look at the purple indelible ink on my index finger, I keep thinking 'Did I really vote for the good of my country? Or did I vote to merely exercise my rights? 

When I looked at my ballot, I couldn't help but shudder in disgust; none of the candidates expressed crystal-clearly the  terms of their platforms (if they had ANY) and the parties enlisted for the most part were vague parties-- there was no assurance of any sort that these parties were not shills for any money-grubbing candidate. I do not, honestly, consider the rulings of the COMELEC on these Parties because in my City alone, Parties have sprung out of nowhere making themselves comfortable with the title "party list". Up to the point of the election, ALL of the voters were kept in the dark it seemed.

Yes, I exercised my 'right' to vote. But in a country like the Philippines even the "right to vote" is one twisted knot in the stomach. 

According to Wikipedia RIGHTS:

are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people, according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical theory.^[1] Rights are of essential importance in such disciplines as law and ethics, especially theories of justice and deontology. Rights are often considered fundamental to civilization, being regarded as established pillars of society and culture,^[2] and the history of social conflicts can be found in the history of each right and its development. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "rights structure the form of governments, the content of laws, and the shape of morality as it is currently perceived."^[1] The connection between rights and struggle cannot be overstated — rights are not as much granted or endowed as they are fought for and claimed, and the essence of struggles past and ancient are encoded in the spirit of current concepts of rights and their modern formulations.    

And voting is an example of:

Legal rights,...are based on a society's customs, laws, statutes or actions by legislatures. An example of a legal right is the right to vote of citizens. Citizenship, itself, is often considered as the basis for having legal rights, and has been defined as the "right to have rights". Legal rights are sometimes called civil rights or statutory rightsand are culturally and politically relative since they depend on a specific societal context to have meaning. 

It makes me feel utterly disenchanted; that the right to vote has been used by these politicians to have themselves take the seat in various offices which we, as citizens, have the right to hold accountable for the improvement and progress of our country. It seems to me that too much abuse has been done against the simplistic faith of most of the Filipino people: this simplistic faith implores the newly elected hoodlums este servant-leaders that the Filipino can finally be at ease to do his job of feeding his family, making his dreams come true, and/or see his country become the tiger of Asia as it envisions itself to be... Now it's easy for some people to say: "Well, you shouldn't have voted for hooligans-- that's what you get for voting them---it's your fault, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah!!!"

I don't believe that ordinary Pinoys didn't have the goggles to see through the election candidates; I do believe that for some reason we've become more astute as to whom to vote for and as to whom not to vote for. But can we really blame the ordinaryong Juan for repeatedly voting for the same stack of politicos when he had not been given more than adequate information concerning the politicians whom he desires to win? Even I, a bourgeois member of the society, chose to vote for the lesser evils, felt like being choked and forced to vote simply because I had to shade those ovals even though very few of those Politcos passed my scrutiny and litmus test! 

Pretty telling as to why most of the candidates, who won the 12 remaining senatorial seats,  belong to one major party. Most of the propaganda machinery was used by a single major political party (And it was all YELLOW), so given the fact that even Manong Basurero has, at least, limited access to the communications media, he was still given yellow junk. Now can we honestly think that he would vote for otherwise when all he had been fed were yellow lies???

In my opinion there is something fundamentally wrong with how we apply our rights. How can we call voting our rights when it is being abused-- abused  in the sense that people have very limited information on politicians and all they clung to were misleading candidacy commercials and catch phrases hatch by the politicos' PR men?   


Information about Rights:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights#Rights_and_politics

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