Elections, Philippine style

Election fever has gripped the Philippines and many candidates and parties are campaigning in the streets of Manila. Meanwhile the combination of guns, goons and gold are the ingredients of another messy election campaign. The government deployed the military to certain urban poor areas of the city where they are harassing the campaigners of progressive party-list systems. Clear proof of government intervention in the elections has been made public this week when Gabriela Women's Party presented a leaked memo of the Office of the President to the public. The memo unveils a plan to "fully support several pro-administration parties" and "substantially lower the number of leftist or left-leaning party-list organizations in the House of Representatives. The memo explicitly mentions that the proposal to fund pro-administration parties is but one of the ways to achieve this goal. And probably it is just the most innocent...