(Continued from Aug. 11, 2018 issue)
LOOKING at these two laws, it is very easy to realize that the people actually have the power now to pass new laws or revise existing laws without the participation of Congress. Not only that, the people actually have the power to change their local officials if the majority of them no longer favor the incumbents, and that even includes the recall of the members of Congress.
By the way, the other alternative is to file cases against these officials in the Office of the Ombudsman, wherein it could possibly happen that they will be dismissed from office and prohibited from running again. If a recall election is held after a local official is dismissed, he or she may no longer be included in the ballot.
Years ago, the Comelec and the Senate jointly appointed me to become the Chairman of the Electoral Modernization Committee. When I submitted our terminal report, I included an annex document wherein I proposed that we should be allowed to vote in the same way that we are allowed to bank.
What I actually meant by that is that if we are allowed to bank through a teller, by phone, via internet and through an Automated Teller Machine (ATM), then the Comelec should also allow us to vote using all these four options. When I suggested that, some members of my Committee objected, saying that it would be difficult to secure the system. In response, I said that it is actually more difficult to secure banking transactions compared to voting transactions.
Since the time that I chaired that Committee, the technologies have evolved by leaps and bounds, and that includes the technologies to secure and authenticate the identities of individuals.
According to Republic Act 8792 (The Electronic Commerce Act), there is supposed to be at least one Certification Authority (CA), supposedly a government agency that would authenticate the identities of individuals by way of a Public Key and Private Key Infrastructure, commonly known as PKI.
The PKI system would have allowed the Comelec to authenticate the identities of citizens so that they could vote using any electronic means.
With or without electronic tools however, there are already laws that allow us to pass laws even without Congress, and to recall local officials even if their term has not yet expired. Call it any name you like, but these laws actually allow us to exercise our democratic rights to the extreme.
With or without PKI, all electronic means could be used for mobilization, to convince the citizens to support people’s initiatives, or to call for recall elections. All electronic means could also be used to urge the citizens to attend Barangay Assemblies, where the people could vote directly whether to amend or repeal local resolutions.
Technically, if more than 50 percent of the citizens no longer like a law, it’s enough numbers to have it amended or repealed. Same goes for a public official who could already be removed from office, if more than 50 percent of the people no longer like him or her. Democracy is just waiting to make it alive./PN