Let’s go out and vote on Monday

ON Monday, May 9, we Filipinos will be trooping to the various polling places to vote for a new set of political leaders at the local and national levels.
The list of the elective positions at stake is rather long – a president, a vice president, a dozen senators (with a six-year term in the Senate), a district congressman (for the House of Representatives), one city mayor, one city vice mayor, six city councilors and one party-list representative.
Except for the 12 senators, the rest will have a term of three years.
It is our solemn duty to vote in this general election. And if you do go out and vote, please vote intelligently.
Don’t “boycott” the polls. She won’t win I guarantee; other will.
Be not afraid to vote people that you believe in even if their campaigns are a long shot.
Like the statistics that are provided in a basketball game, election surveys are raw numbers simply meant to be seen. Survey firms – no different from the sophisticated paid hacks or spin doctors – contend the results of the survey have scientific basis but the Marines know better that they do not really have.
Surveys are sought by some traditional politicians with vested interests. A candidate or political party that commissions them usually is ranked high. Another form of vote-buying, the unreliable surveys are meant to condition the minds of the undecided electorate that so-and-so candidate is ahead in the competition and thereby create an “artificial” bandwagon effect.
Don’t sell your votes and don’t mind the surveys.
Wonder of wonders – I have been exercising my voting rights since the early seventies (even the rump elections and referendums during the martial law years) and yet I have never been surveyed at any time during my earthly existence, not even once.
Something’s strange in the neighborhood. No, it’s not the Ghostbusters that are out there; it’s the paid hacks that do the surveys.
Obliterate the survey firms from our consciousness for they know nothing but to insult our intelligence.
Simply vote according to our conscience. For in the end, we Filipinos deserve the government officials we vote into office. That is cheating aside, of course. (Hello Garci no more). Smartmatic and Comelec, are you listening?)
Blame others not and shame on you if you insist on picking rotten apples when you could have had a fill of the quality kind.
Throw the despicable tradpols – the traditional politicians who are schooled in the art of cheating and vote-buying – into the dustbin of history.
And, through our ballots, let’s also break up the political dynasties that have mushroomed through the decades.
Shame on our current honorable (?) legislators, who for years cowardly would not want to pass a law forbidding political dynasties if only to protect their own turfs.
On May 9, let’s all come out and go to the polling booths. Vote early and vote intelligently. And, for the sake of our country, may the ‘real’ winners be proclaimed.