Will the May Elections Lie to Us?

Presidential, local and legislative elections are scheduled in the Philippines for Monday, May 10th, 2010. In what ways does this fact affect the broad range of development issues being studied by the IEDP team in February and March? Will the political objectives of local organizations or individuals obscure any aspect of the material or social realities of development that we hope to observe? How do the impacts of an impending election differ in a developing country like the Philippines than they do in a developed Western democracy like the United States? How can we achieve a clear, impartial, value-added perspective on the development picture in the Philippines so close to a major election? Are potential corrections in our research that account for the effects of the elections appropriate? What would those corrections look like?

A cursory survey of the daily news in the Philippines reveals the pervasiveness of electoral concerns throughout the spectrum of topics we've identified as crucial to a comprehensive sense of development trends -- from issues of governance and transparency, to human rights, ethics reform, judiciary reform, and fiscal decision-making.

For example, a proposed bill to introduce freedom of information measures will "go back to square one" after the House failed to ratify it during its last session before recessing for the upcoming election. Some have alleged that the failure to ratify the bill resulted from political calculations originating in the presidential palace, asserting that the the "administration may be 'allergic' to a bill that promotes transparency in the affairs of the state." Here's the story.

On a completely unrelated but not irrelevant note:

There is clearly a dark side to the widespread economic and cultural incentivization of labor migration in the Philippines, as those of us investigating human trafficking (both sex- and labor-trafficking) are beginning to discover. Last night, Professor Dean Yang and the second Economic Policy team presented a rich overview of the economic impacts of this migration on the country. Nested inside all of the comparative charts and causal inferences presented are the individual stories of the migrants themselves. I think all of us recognize that. However, I don't think any of us -- as we listened to last night's presentations -- were imagining a migrant experience quite This. Freaking. Crazy.

Imagine this. A man distantly related to you, who you've evidently never met (since you clearly don't recognize him), poses as a federal official to put you in handcuffs and take you to what sounds like the door of an airplane to get you out of the country. Please follow the link above to the Huffington Post and read the story.

What?