REJOICE! The Easter season tells us because CHRIST LIVES! For the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting, the just concluded National and Local Elections 2019 moves us to REJOICE because PPCRV LIVES! CHRIST, its CHAMP, has again boosted our hope with a glimpse of a Clean, Honest, Accurate, Meaningful and Peaceful Elections last May 13, 2019.
Why do I say this? Three important reasons:
1. Inspired participation of PPCRV’s new leadership
The new PPCRV leadership headed by Myla Villanueva, assisted by Executive Director Maribel Buenaobra and new Board of Trustees: John Victor de Dios, Christian Robert Lim, Henry Aguda, and Abp. Rolando Tria Tirona, treasurer Tess Curia, and new spokesperson Agnes Gervacio, put up a machinery within six months that went beyond expectation. This animated the support of PPCRV’s old guards like Fr. Dave, Arwin, Johnny, Jun, Paolo, Rene, and Moi, as well as the PPCRV Diocesan Coordinators nationwide and our cherished bishops.
2. Progressive IT participation of PPCRV Directors
New methods in the use of technology enhanced and migrated the PPCRV three-fold mandate onto cloud domain. For Voters Education and Poll Patching, Paolo Domondon and his team re- formulated PPCRV’s One Good Vote
for online usage. The Unofficial Parallel Count by PPCRV was sharpened to new formats of accuracy by our IT experts, Rommel Bernardo and William Yu. Proof of these are shown in the graphs and analyses printed in this magazine. One big factor for the transparency of NLE 2019 was the IT group’s accurate and timely reading of the audit logs from the COMELEC Transparency Server that somehow calmed the anxiety brought on by the now famous
seven-hour glitch.
3. Dynamic participation of Youth Volunteers
While volunteerism has always been an icon of PPCRV service, this time around the youth came marching in. To elicit new fervor among the young, a novel idea of naming PPCRV Youth Ambassadors who excel in their chosen specialized fields (i.e. sports, social media, academics, etc.) and who influence a formidable following in youth communities promoted the importance of participating in PPCRV. Their call to the young Filipinos to express love for God and country through pro-active participation in NLE 2019 coincided with the celebration of 2019 as the “Year of the Youth,” and its theme highlighting the youth as “Beloved, Gifted, Empowered.”
The AES (Automated Election System) ushered in solutions to some gargantuan problems in our electoral process. Definitely there was a wipe- out of retail and wholesale “dagdag- bawas.” But other corruptive practices continue to escalate like vote buying and selling. Technology can accelerate transformation, but transformation is a process of buildups, punctuated
by breakthroughs made possible through disciplined participation of the citizenry. In this, I pray for a disciplined people through the new Filipino voter; disciplined thought through a new responsible way of choosing candidates; disciplined action through unconditional and uncompromised participation in the electoral process.
My vision and dream when I organized the PPCRV in 1991 remains the same – a transformed political system that works
for the common good through elections that are efficient tools of authentic democracy; a Church of the Poor and for the Poor wherein the poor are the subjects and the agents of change;
and Youth who serve as the mirror of freedom and liberation of our nation.
The youthful leadership in PPCRV and the thousands of PPCRV Youth Volunteers rouse me to boldly declare (with a paraphrase of the Dominican theologian Yves Congar):
And now the youth have found their own place, they have found the voice to speak and act the Truth.
IT IS NOW THE TIME OF THE HEIRS.
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