Frankly, two facts dictated the August 25 Special Elections. The first is that more than half of the Liberal Arts Academic Organization turned out to vote. The second fact is simple: the elections were not enough.
Everyone knows what happened next. The LAAO Special Elections were declared a failure. Weeks-long efforts have been dashed and scattered. The Judicial Council has mandated the AELECOM to hold a fresh set of elections. AELECOM bends and schedules it from September 6 to 20.
Had it been just that, it would have been easier to sweep under the rug. This time though, AELECOM just manages to royally mess up to the point that it takes more than sweeping to keep things under the rug. This led to the other parties involved to speak up.
“Despite our attempts for a reconsideration,” the Union of Students for the Advancement of Democracy (USAD) wrote in their August 26 public statement, “we were met with a finality that determined the fate of the Liberal Arts community.”
Raising people’s eyebrows, they continued: “SLA students were confronted with a lack of initiative and consideration from a body expected to prioritize this major issue in the student government.”
Barely three hours after USAD released their frankly pointed statement, Erica Losabia, moderator of the AELECOM, shared her sentiments online. “Despite the unending grants of countless demands,” she countered, “the result was still not in favor. Raising concerns and/or messaging the commissioners (sic) will not cause a cent so please mind your attitude.” Cheekily, she quipped in Filipino, “Student leader pa naman.”
As if they have tempted fate, the Board of College Governors stepped in with their own resolution, posted on August 28. In their four-page piece, the Board “strongly encouraged” AELECOM to rectify its errors and “strongly urged” to conduct a re-do of the elections as per the Judicial Council. With an eloquence rivaling New York Times bestselling authors, they penned:
“The AELECOM is further urged to communicate transparently with the student body regarding the redo of the LAAO Special Elections.”
The Board, with all the great legislative power vested in it, has decided to “urge” the AELECOM to do its job. Their piece had more urging in it than a 7-year-old boy throwing a tantrum. Does the Board not mourn the fact they have been denied the opportunity to cooperate with LAAO? Is their concern limited to simply “encouraging” with no stronger course of action? But this is another topic for us to talk about later.
Regardless of this fact, the Board was right to point out the multiple lapses and deficiencies of the AELECOM. Even before the announcement of the failure of elections, AELECOM has already failed its constitutional duties in three major ways.
- Conducting the Special Elections
As stated by ECA’s constitution, the Judicial Council “shall determine vacancies in any of the elective positions and shall have the sole power to declare a vacancy in any of the elective positions.” This is followed by Article V, Section 8 which states that “A special election must be held not later than two (2) weeks after the declared vacancy and must be conducted by the Ateneo Electoral Commission, in concurrence with this Constitution and of the Ateneo Electoral Code, in the specific Academic Organization where there is a declared vacancy by the Judicial Council.”
AELECOM somehow decided that they can just ‘take initiative’ and conduct a special election even if there was no declaration of vacancy coming from the Judicial Council. This puts a question on the validity of the first LAAO Special Election. If there was no formal and legal declaration of a vacancy, was it necessary to do the special elections?
- Providing the sufficient platforms
Going beyond political parties, it would have been acceptable enough to learn of a failure of elections if a clean and fair platform for campaigning had been provided. The opposite was provided because right from the get-go, AELECOM appeared to be very much unprepared.
While ECA’s constitution does note that the Special Elections must be conducted within three weeks. Experiencing it in the real-time also puts a question of whether these three weeks are sufficient enough to provide the opportunity for normal LAAO students, especially those who are affiliated with no political party, to run. Is a week of contemplating your platforms sufficient enough? Is less than a week of campaigning sufficient enough to make sure your desires reach those who need it?
On day one of room-to-room campaigning, USAD Party Premiere, Ezikiel Pamaran expressed that their candidates were “already prepared to campaign at 11AM on the first day of campaigning.” However, delays became prominent due to AELECOM’s negligence. “…the commissioner who was in charge of securing the letter for campaign wasn’t present yet…So, the candidates lost two hours of campaign time on that day and that affected their reach for classrooms.” To add more to this, because there was a class suspension on the very next day and no classes for SLA students on Fridays, it appeared that the candidates were only given a few hours of campaign time which was not even enough time to make sure your platforms reach everyone who needed to hear it.
When the Miting De Avance came, not even 5% of LAAO students came with it because it was held on a Saturday. This beats the purpose of a Miting De Avance and once again, goes against Article IV, Section 1B of their Electoral Code which stipulates that “This shall be held on the same week of the Election Days.” Because it was inaccessible for the students, Pamaran requested for a livestream coming from AELECOM themselves but was told that they didn’t have the sufficient equipment needed for a livestream.
“It does not make sense for the candidates to talk and speak about salient issues in not only SLA but also about Ateneo to only the election officers,” he added.
As if this wasn’t enough, AELECOM decided to run the elections through Google Forms which was: (1) not accessible to most students, especially the first year students and (2) not stipulated in their Electoral Code. Not only this, there was also an error that took place on the part of AELECOM in which they released a “three hours left” publication material on the time that the forms were supposed to close. This led to even more misinformation, leaving the students to believe that they can vote at a later time. AELECOM then deleted their post and said it was a connection error. They not only failed to provide a sufficient platform for the students to hear the plans of the candidates, but also failed to even give the voters accessibility to vote.
- Transparency
When USAD requested for a final tally of the results, AELECOM only denied provision to such information. USAD sought to know the detailed results of the special elections and learn of the number of in favor votes, abstentions, and percentages for each candidate. This was noting that the very same was done in the previous general elections.
AELECOM only said, “It seems like you don’t respect our rights and questioned the duties of the commission in delivering the accurate information about the results wherein just like you’ve mentioned you were there as a watcher. You should have protest(ed) about the results. Also, we never posted the tally results of any failure of elections. Please verify first your information.”
When transparency is demanded, it seems, AELECOM’s only response would be to deny it or hide it. This goes the same when they released their Memorandum No. 03-2023 which declared that the 2nd LAAO Special Elections would be conducted through manual voting. Once more, this raised a few eyebrows. When asked of information and transparency from other Ateneo alumni, AELECOM in its truest form, only responded with, a like (which was later on retracted), and “further information will be released soon.”
The Consejo Constitution mandates the AELECOM to “assure free, honest, and clean elections, plebiscite, and/or referenda in full concurrence with this constitution.” What kind of assurance has been made to the candidates, to their supporters, and to the School of Liberal Arts?
This piece calls for accountability, not on behalf of any political actor or motive, but in defense of the majority of LAAO voters. It calls for honesty and transparency from a spiteful Commission shrouded in secrecy. It rallies to the defense of USAD’s candidates, not in some political move, but in recognition that they are students too.
The decision of whether Kars Ramirez and Emjay Serna will become LAAO’s Governor and Vice-Governor must not lay in the hands of the Consejo. It cannot be held hostage by the AELECOM or its Commissioners. Similarly, it will not be dictated by the BEACON, this Opinion piece, or any individual person. That decision can only be made by LAAO students and their ballots. If USAD failed to get the voters to the polls, then AELECOM failed to make those polls accessible in the first place.
If 10 votes are enough to declare an election a failure, those same 10 votes are enough to call AELECOM a failure too.
