August 1, 2009 was a sad day for the Philippines. Early that day, former President Corazon Cojuangco Aquino–Cory Aquino to the masses–finally succumbed to a lingering illness. She had been battling colon cancer for the last 16 months.

Time Magazine Cover - Corazon Aquino Time Woman of the Year 1986

She was the 11th President of the Republic of the Philippines, but she was better known around the world for much more than that. She was the face of democracy everywhere, especially in the 80s and 90s. On August 21, 1983, her husband Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr was shot dead at the Manila International Airport while disembarking from a plane. Ninoy Aquino, erstwhile in exile in the United States, was a former senator and had been a vocal leader of the political opposition to the Marcos administration, which at that point had already been in power for 18 years. It is widely believed that the Marcoses were involved in the shooting. Asked why he would choose to return even though he knew there were threats on his life, he famously replied, “The Filipino is worth dying for.”

The assassination triggered an avalanche of social uprising which forced Ferdinand Marcos to declare snap presidential elections in 1986. Opposition forces joined together and collected one million signatures in one week to convince Aquino to run against Marcos. Despite widespread reports of electoral fraud, Marcos was declared the winner by the government’s Commission on Elections. At the same time, an independent electoral watchdog, the National Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL), declared Aquino the winner.

The days that followed were punctuated by both sides claiming power, but on February 22, 1986, two of Marcos’s closest aides, Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and Armed Forces Vice Chief of Staff Fidel Ramos (who would later on succeed Aquino as Philippine President) resigned from their posts and declared their support for Cory Aquino. The then archbishop of Manila, Jaime Cardinal Sin, went on radio to ask Filipinos to come and support Enrile and Ramos and to help prevent the government forces from reaching their location.

What happened in the next few days will come to be known as the world-famous “People Power Revolution.” About two million people converged on the streets. The mood was festive and people were singing nationalistic songs. On February 25, 1986, after most of the Armed Forces had defected and with millions of people in the streets, Corazon Aquino was sworn in as the new President of the Philippines. Marcos held his own inauguration, but with people slowly converging on Malacañang Palace (the presidential residence), the Marcoses were feeling more pressure, until finally at about 9 PM that evening, they were flown to Hawaii by American aircraft.

Thus ended the non-violent revolution that installed the Philippines’ first female president, and inspired similar non-violent revolutions in Asia and around the world, culminating in the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Casting a ballot

Today, November 4, 2008, is an historic day in the United States of America. Very possibly, if we are to believe all the surveys and polls, Americans may vote into office their very first African-American President. There is buzz all around that voter turnout will be high–which is always good–because Americans realize the importance of this vote and the effect of the elected person will have on their future as a nation and as a people.

One thing that always amazes me, apart from the democratic process itself, is how quick the results are known. In a matter of hours, barring any close calls like 2000, a president-elect is known and announced. I guess this is one of those instances wherein technology is properly and efficiently used.

In the Philippines, it usually takes weeks, sometimes months, to finish counting all the ballots cast for a national election. A lot of efforts have been made to computerize the counting process in order to greatly speed up the process, but up until now the process remains manual. Yes, teachers counting the votes by hand and the returns added up from the municipal level all the way to the national level. Why, you wonder? Because the procurement process, as is so often the case in third world government, is so rigged with graft and corruption that the eventual winner of the bidding process has the most subpar and defective solution. And government will find this out after pilots have been done and millions of pesos have been spent testing the system–essentially putting to waste all the money and energy spent.

Another possible reason for the continued manual process is so that political parties (more specifically the ruling political party)  will find it easier to manipulate the results in their favor. Some years back, during presidential elections in the Philippines, allegations of “dagdag-bawas” (”add-subtract”) were rampant. The concept was very simple but very effective: votes were “subtracted” from your opponent and “added” to yours. You got more votes while your opponent got less, and the total number of votes doesn’t change–making it appear on the surface that no manipulations have been done. Like I said, so simple yet so effective.

Who knows, maybe next election we’ll have a new computerized counting system. Either that, or a new way of moving around votes.