Res ipsa loquitur SILVER LINING Dean Ernest Maceda 03/11/2010

Res ipsa loquitur SILVER LINING Dean Ernest Maceda 03/11/2010 With the results of the latest Pulse and SWS surveys further stoking the furnace, the race for Malacañang looks well on its way to combustion. The increased focus and obsession with the leading presidential candidates mean less focus and obsession with the aspirants in the lesser races. Rather than bother to scrutinize candidates for other national offices, they settle instead on candidates that are known or those they already know. Of course, this is a boon for incumbents, past and present. The atmosphere is further relaxed by the Commission on Elections’ preoccupation with pesky automation issues. With the Comelec looking one way and the voters looking the other, conditions ripen for bad things to happen. Case in point, the party-list accreditation process. When the “experiment” started in 1998, a presidential election year, only 26 percent of those who went to the polls cast their vote for party-list representative. In 2001, this figure increased to 42 percent. The year 2004 was another presidential election year and the percentage contracted to 39 percent. Last 2007, a high 53 percent cast party list votes.... MORE Source:  The Daily Tribune ALTERNATE URL: http://www.tribune.net.ph/commentary/20100311com6.html

COMMENTARY EDITORIAL Realities FRONTLINE No assurance of AFP professionalism FEATURE East Sudan, a first step for Eritrea’s Europe-bound migrants BLURBAL THRUSTS Banco de Oro set to gobble up Steel Corp. FEATURE Nigerian mothers recall children’s slaughter SILVER LINING Res ipsa loquitur VIEWPOINTS 2010 polls and socio-political scene