Temperatures on the rise

IT’S getting hot, hot, hot. And we are not just talking about the summer season.

The last leg of the campaign for the May 14 polls is also heating up, especially in the fiercely-contested seat for the fourth congressional district of Pangasinan.

As temperatures rise to the upper 30 degrees centigrade level (and PAGASA warns that it could very well reach 40 by May), dirty accusations of vote-buying are being hurled back and forth between the opposing camps of re-electionist Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. and Dagupan City Mayor Benjamin Lim (and both have threatened to actually file corresponding charges before the Commission on Election).

Vote-buying is an age-old issue in Philippine elections but no one in the history of the country’s politics has ever been convicted of this offense. Nay, even our President, who has been accused of the bigger crime of massive cheating in the 2004 election, remains comfortably in power. Politicians will buy votes for as long as there are voters who are ready to sell. Elections will only be as clean and honest as we are willing to guard our votes.

The political contest between De Venecia and Lim is particularly intense because the stakes are high.

For De Venecia, the founding president of the ruling Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrat party, it is not just about gunning for a third and last term in office, it is also about retaining the speakership in the House of Representatives.

For Lim, who used to be a member of the ruling coalition and once held the district’s congressional seat in 1998-2001 under the administration’s ticket but is now a candidate under the opposition PDP-Laban party, it is not just about bidding goodbye to his mayoralty job and reclaiming his old post, it is also about ruffling the dynamics of the leadership in Congress, and not to mention sustaining his political career.

Significant changes in the composition of Congress, both in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, could spell broad implications in all the three branches – executive, legal, and judicial – of government.

The result of the voting in the fourth district will not just have an impact on the lives of the locals, it will also have a bearing on the national political landscape.

The voters of Dagupan City and the towns of Manaoag, Mangaldan, San Jacinto and San Fabian thus carry a huge responsibility in their hands.

Hopefully the excruciating summer heat will not obscure the decision of the district’s voters.

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