Hope made Rodrigo Ponce Jr. trade his life for a few hundred meaningless votes.
It led Tomas de Jesus to speak up when they stole his vote.
And it inspired thousands of men and women to march through the streets to protect the ballot boxes they knew would be gone in a minute if they left them alone.
Hope made heroes of every Filipino who voted in Friday`s fraud-filled presidential election.
”It is better to light one candle than curse the darkness” is the motto adopted by NAMFREL, the citizen watchdog group that vowed to curb election cheating.
Ponce, a NAMFREL volunteer, was trying to light a candle by guarding the ballot box at a polling station in Roxas City on Panay Island. He died trying to stop a gunman from snatching the box an hour before the polls closed.
A few hundred miles away, in the town of Arayat, north of Manila, De Jesus said the noblest intention he had on Election Day was to cast his ballot. He found himself forced to take a stand when he showed up at the polling center and was told he had already voted.
”I showed them my registration and told them I never voted, but they just said to go away,” said De Jesus, 40, who turned to NAMFREL for help. NAMFREL filed a complaint on his behalf, as it did for thousands of other disenfranchised voters on Election Day.
”It is frustrating,” said NAMFREL president Jose Concepcion. ”People who queued up for hours to have a say in the destiny of their country have been cheated, because they were deprived of their right to vote.”
Concepcion estimated that in metropolitan Manila alone, as many as 450,000 eligible voters were unable to cast ballots because their names were illegally stricken from the rolls–or someone else voted in their stead.
In previous elections, disenfranchised voters often were reluctant to complain for fear of retribution. ”I know it is dangerous to complain, but they tell me it is my duty,” De Jesus said.
In the Mandiluyong section of eastern Manila, several thousand people took it upon themselves to fulfill a duty normally handled by governments. They watched while their votes were counted and then they escorted the ballots to the town hall to prevent cheating.
There is a history in the Philippines of vote totals changing dramatically somewhere between the precinct level and the town hall. Both NAMFREL and opposition presidential candidate Corazon Aquino were aware of that when they urged voters repeatedly to guard the ballot boxes as long as possible.
The voters in Mandiluyong responded in moving fashion. They formed a series of motorcades to escort their ballot boxes through the darkened streets.
One motorcade took 30 minutes to travel six blocks. Along the way, marchers joined in with flashlights to make sure that the van carrying the ballots never slipped into darkness.
Thousands lined the route to the town hall shouting ”Cory! Cory!
Cory!”–knowing full well that the ballot boxes going slowly by probably contained a landslide victory for Aquino in their district.
At the town hall, there was an even more moving display of the ”People Power” that Aquino and NAMFREL boasted so much about during the campaign.
Thousands of people milled about, waiting to welcome the schoolteachers escorting the ballot boxes. As each motorcade drove up, the crowd let out a roar and, suddenly, scores of pocket flashlights appeared to show the way. The fuzzy beams of light dancing back and forth over upraised arms made the scene look like a Hollywood premiere.
As the teachers filed out of the vans carrying their ballot boxes, the crowd parted. Almost magically, a manmade corridor was lighted by boys holding candles on the end of sugar canes.
The cheering never stopped, but occasionally the crowd, in its exuberance, closed around the teachers. When that happened, the teachers invariably put their ballot boxes on the ground and sat on them defiantly.
”Nothing`s going to happen to these votes,” said attorney Jaime Yaneza, who walked behind one of the motorcades training a flashlight on the ballot boxes. ”Those boxes in there represent our only hope for an honest change.”
