Fast forward to today, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) now makes it possible to quickly and regularly conduct surveys that would measure the pulse of the people, as to what laws they would like to be passed, and as to how governance should be conducted. No one might have noticed it as of now, but these surveys are actually using the same technologies that could be used for both consultations and elections.
There are many derivatives of ICT that could be used for consultations and elections; among these are Short Messaging Service (SMS), Instant Messaging (IM), mobile apps, email and social networks. If this direction is pursued however, there would be questions about determining the identities of the respondents or voters, and about protecting the security of the mobile and online systems.
Looking at this from a technical perspective however, I would right way say that there are many technologies that could validate the identities of persons, and there are also many technologies that could ensure the security of the systems.
Aside from recall elections, the law is now in place to allow the people to directly pass laws through people’s initiatives (PI), in effect bypassing the Congress itself. Needless to say, the same technologies that are used for consultations and surveys could also be used to gather the signatures that are needed to produce the numbers that are required by the PI process.
Again, there would certainly be issues of identity and security, but just the same, there are many technologies that could be used to address these issues. The fact is, all systems could potentially be hacked, but on the upside, all systems could also be fully protected.
Even without the use of ICT, the Local Government Code (LGC) is loaded with provisions that would allow the participation of citizens in the Local Development Councils (LDCs), with full voting rights and not just for consultation purposes. Sad to say, the records would show that not too many citizens would attend these council meetings, in effect forfeiting their rights to be represented and to be heard.
Aside from the LDCs, representatives from certain marginalized sectors are entitled to representation in the municipal councils and the provincial boards, but as I understand it, the selection of the representatives has been influenced by bad politics and rampant corruption.
In a manner of speaking, it could be said that every Filipino now has a voting machine in his hand, and that is the mobile phone. It does not matter whether he has a feature phone or a smartphone, because either way, it could work as a voting machine.
While it may still be a long time before our country could go back to a direct democracy just like the ancient Greeks, there is nothing now that would prevent us from not only expressing ourselves in the processes of consultations and surveys, but also in the form of recall elections and people’s initiatives./PN
