Age

One could possibly point to the median age of the search committee members themselves. It is chaired by Bernardino Abes, still young when he was appointed Secretary of Labor by President Diosdado P. Macapagal. But that was two generations ago. Its most vocal member is Jose Concepcion Jr., surely no longer in the prime of active life. Another member is Vicente "Ting" Jayme, like Joecon, a former Cory cabinet member, who is about as old. I reserve comment about the other members till I validate their real age, but why should I, especially where ladies are concerned? Some correlation may be had between some people’s age and the ken of vision which they use to search high and wide. But apart from passing mention, this article is not about them.

Rather it is about what ought to be the job description and candidate’s requirements for a new chair of the Commission on Electoral Cheating. In the wake of Abalos and Garcillano, not to mention some low-profile rogues appointed to that agency before and after Edsa I, the nation looks to the forthcoming choice of Comelec chair and two more commissioners as a signal whether 2010 will provide hope, or even whether there will be 2010 at all.

For the Commission on Electoral Cheating to once more be reconstructed in the public mind as the Commission on Elections, it is not enough that the new chair is a so-called "man of integrity". He has to be a man of "character", thoroughly independent in the esteem of previous peers and co-workers in both public and private sectors. He must be high-minded at all times, unlike one who was a legal consultant for distressed officials of this government in the recent ZTE-NBN hearings at the Senate. Did Abalos consult this nominee as to whether or not he should resign in the wake of the scandal of the decade? Or was it Leandro Mendoza he stood for when he sat quietly behind the two resource invitees to the Senate hearing?

But let me zero in on age as requirement for task. Nobody takes someone past 35 for a strenuous job unless he has had career experience in that job. Why take a retired Supreme Court magistrate, likely 73 or 74 years of age, for a task that requires cleaning stables that are the dirtiest in the entire government bureaucracy, bar none? Some will take me to task for this "sweeping" accusation, but a dirty customs examiner or a dirty BIR examiner does injury limited to the victim, and to the coffers of government. A dirty election commissioner, down to the dirty election registrar or supervisor, does injury most gross to democracy itself. Think especially of what Virgilio Garcillano did for Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and try calculating the irreparable harm this duo did to country and generations of Filipinos. It is beyond measure.

The reason justices of the higher courts are retired at seventy instead of 65, which is the requisite age for career public servants to leave the bureaucracy, is because the task requires experience more than physical energy.

A chair of the Comelec is not just a magistrate sitting in judgment of election cases. He is a chief executive officer of an agency whose systems are obsolete, perhaps deliberately so, whose personnel have seen so much corruption and have succumbed to its temptations and the periodic opportunities (elections come every three years) for graft, and whose legal procedures have been designed as discretions for corruption. And the new chair of the Comelec will have to achieve these awesome three-fold responsibilities within less than two years maximum. His energy level cannot lag. Dynamism is required. (As we submit this article, we read that Senator Joker Arroyo had parallel thoughts on age as a fitness requirement. One of the rare times we agree with him.)

Tell me now if age does not matter in the selection of the new Comelec chair.

If we ever get down to revising our Constitution, I propose that we create two agencies in place of the present Comelec configuration. Let us have an agency in charge of the electoral system, and a separate tribunal that would be in charge of election-related cases. The former need not be headed by a lawyer, but by a management man, a systems engineer, anybody but a politician, a jurist, or someone whose previous experience is alien to administrative or systems management.

Age, this time taken in the opposite, is also the problem of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

Their chief of staff, Hermogenes Esperon, the friend of Garci and loyal toady of Gloria, is due to retire on February 9, when he reaches the soldier’s mandatory retirement age of 56. Of course the law provides that the commander-in-chief, in this case Gloria, by the grace of Garci proclaimed president of the benighted republic, has the prerogative to extend the services of her chief of staff, next to her in the chain of command. But the prerogative is sparingly and prudently exercised in case of war or national emergencies. Neither exists, except in the febrile imagination of who else but Hermogenes himself, with a chorus line headed by that aging soprano, Raul Gonzalez, sometimes Sonny Razon, who backdrops like a desafinado choir boy, for curiously unintelligible reasons.

The disingenuous script is clear to anyone but a dolt. Only Esperon will do as his Boss Woman bids, never mind reason or law or morality. Just like Fabian Ver was to Marcos, this man has shown fidelity like no other. The acid tests must have been many, but let me mention two: the 2004 elections where Garci was heard telling Gloria that Esperon was cooperative; and the Camp Aguinaldo incident when Danny Lim and Ariel Querubin faced then AFP-CS Senga, and Esperon allegedly balked at co-optation by those who could not in conscience follow the orders of a fake commander-in-chief. Having been part of the faking operation, he might as well stand by his fake president. Thus did Senga himself waver, and the rest is part of the history of this amoral regime.

So, will the Boss Woman extend the services of her loyal Esperon? He is still young, isn’t he?

Will she appoint Jose Melo as chair of the Commission on Electoral Cheating? He may be old, but he is a friend of Abalos, isn’t he? Or is it another faithful, Leandro of DOTC and ATO? Besides, does the Boss Woman care about cleaning the electoral system? Don’t bet on her "legacy".

Will the sovereign people of this benighted country elect a new president in 2010? Don’t bet on it either.

But did I not propose some kind of winnowing process to choose men of competence and character, to lead the nation after Gloria? Well, choosing among many for these two virtues will always serve us in good stead. But competence and character are not the standards which Gloria Macapagal Arroyo uses when she appoints men to the most sensitive posts in the bureaucracy.

Who she appoints or extends in the next two weeks should give us a clue as to whether she intends to ride serenely into the sunset, or she’s digging in, to be suffered by the people until God knows when..