JEDDAH, 15 June 2007 — AS WE all wait to see what the Commission on Elections decides to do with the fraud-riddled votes from Maguindanao (apparently it cannot legally declare a failure of elections there since many people did actually vote), I would like to pay homage to Musa Dimasidsing, a school district supervisor in Pagalungan, Maguindanao, who witnessed massive cheating with his own eyes and then went public with his complaints that he had filed with the Comelec.
Unfortunately for all of us, Musa was brutally shot dead last Saturday outside an Islamic school. He was killed because he refused to allow the political operators in the area to get away with rigging the vote and snatching ballot boxes.
The unfortunate fact is that the Comelec itself has been party to this cheating by deliberately hiding certificates of canvass and not guarding them properly. This is what Comelec’s Provisional Supervisor for Maguindanao Lintang Bedol did following the May 14 election. Now Bedol is claiming that the CoCs in his possession have disappeared and he cannot say what happened to them! What utter nonsense. He should be jailed until he tells the police what really happened to the missing CoCs and who ordered him to lose them.
Some observers will say that Bedol is just an anomaly, the exception to the rule. But I say no, he is a prime example of just how dishonored and besmirched the whole reputation of the Comelec has become ever since the Hello Garci tapes scandal in the 2004 elections.
Comelec Chairman Benjamin Abalos is leading a thoroughly corrupted and stained organization. It is clear that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo kept him and other commissioners in place following the 2004 polls because they were able to deliver the votes that kept her in power.
I think the Supreme Court should step in and rule that the votes from Maguindanao for the senatorial candidates, which seemed to have been the most corrupted, should be set aside and not counted toward the final results. The votes for local candidates, especially where candidates were running unopposed, should be counted and declared final.
But the whole culture of vote buying and snopaking election returns needs to be desperately changed and fast. All of the current Comelec commissioners should be changed and the whole electoral process should be computerized. An independent commission should be in charge of appointing election commissioners, who should only be allowed to serve for a maximum of five years, with no reappointments allowed until another five years have lapsed. That way there will be less chances of cheating, something the Philippine electorate needs if the whole electoral process is not to be thoroughly discredited.
The Ruffa-Yilmaz Breakup
THE messy breakup of actress Ruffa Gutierrez from her Turkish husband Yilmaz Bektas has been keeping television viewers glued to their screens for the latest installment.
A few weeks ago, Ruffa appeared on ABS-CBN’s celebrity gossip show “The Buzz” to tearfully announce that she was separating from her husband after five years of marriage. Although host Boy Abunda tried pressing her about Yilmaz allegedly hitting her, Ruffa refused to accuse her husband of spousal abuse.
Now after a series of tit-for-tat interviews between Ruffa and Yilmaz it has been confirmed that “yes” Ruffa was married to a Filipino man in a quickie Las Vegas ceremony in the 1990s, “yes” she did file for divorce but never followed up on the papers to make sure it came through, “yes” she supposedly told Yilmaz about that marriage before their own marriage in 2002, and “yes” Yilmaz, according to Ruffa, hit her twice.
Throughout all of this Ruffa’s infamously meddling mother, Annabelle Rama, had been hovering in the background whining and crying that she wanted her daughter to return back to the Philippines for good and dump her husband. She now seems to have gotten what she wanted, though I’m not sure she will be happy for very long with the results.
Ruffa’s two daughters with Yilmaz are now both very young, but when they grow older and find out all of the nasty things that Ruffa, Yilmaz and Annabelle said about each other, I doubt they will be pleased.
Ruffa, meanwhile, has been snapped up by ABS-CBN, signing a contract with them recently that ensures she only appears on the Kapamilya network.
The announcement yesterday that Ruffa has requested armed protection from the Philippine National Police after supposed death threats from Yilmaz is laughable because it only adds to the drama of a breakup that is being milked to the maximum by Ruffa and ABS-CBN. We TV viewers are also to blame for feeding this hungry publicity monster by sitting glued to our screens for the latest Ruffa-Yilmaz installment. It’s just too bad that a fairytale marriage had to end up so sordidly splashed across our screens in such a fashion.
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