Today, let's approach T.I.P on a micro-scale. My professor in Social Science 1 claimed that one can see Philippines in a microscopic view by looking at the University of the Philippines. To some extent, we are a unique in the world. Our education is "mostly" funded by the government. We live in an open campus that is a mixture of squatters, students, and professors. The students come from all backgrounds: very poor, middle class, and the sons of tycoons. The political background is also like what you can see on the outside: left, right, and the apathetic. We have our own share of violence (specifically frat wars). The crimes that happen in Philippine communities are also present here: holdups, carnaps, kidnapping, theft, corruption, and many to mention. If one wants to experience the Philippines, it is right here, at the heart of Diliman.
Now, let's try to peek at the white hat. Youth is usually equated with idealism. The phrases that expound it are "youth on fire" or "youthful fervor". Idealism with action can materialize a lot of useful thoughts. At the end of the day it's not the 100% idea, but that is because it is ideal-ism. I'll give you one example: just today, the UP Linux Users' Group (UnPLUG) has just implemented a very succesful Engineering Student Council (ESC) elections using our homegrown software. This is the product of idealism of a group of students with a vision to see the elections computerized. Here are some stats from Wigi:
Voting time for ESC: around 1:45 - 1:50 mins
Voters: 1800+
Turn-out: ~50.26 %
Results: immediately after closing the polls
Halalan, is an open-source voting system geared towards online and SMS-enabled elections. If you have been reading the news, Halalan won in the "Best plans for FOSS (free and open source software) deployment project on new server for community benefit" category in the Software Freedom Day 2006 competition. UnPLUG shared the spotlight with Ceres, a Disaster Prevention and Rapid Response Network system from Peru's Team Cultura Libre. For winning, the UnPLUG received an IBM System p5 510 Express Server worth $8800.
Our aim is to computerize the whole elections by next year. We make each stride a little bigger. The developers encountered a lot of problems, and surprisingly these problems are not technical in nature. Recall T.I.like.P (this is like Philippines), we have to go through the politics of convincing parties and the administration to computerize the elections. I will not go through the issues of computerization. Most will agree that computerization is a lot of savings in terms of cost, manpower and efficiency. National elections is another talk. But just like how we described UP as a microcosm of the Philippines, today's election is also a microcosm of the National Elections. Most people will shun it because it not the usual thing. The usual thing is ballots, papers, and ink. Politicians will dislike it. It is more expensive and difficult to hire a professional computer intruder. The traditional and cheaper way is to hire a COMELEC commissioner (e.g. Garci).
We were not paid to do the software but our consolation is to see how students see the Halalan as a bliss. The Engineering students will attest to it. A few clicks, and before the sun sets, the election results are up. Creating a free and open (meaning you can download the source code) software for the community is another form of idealism. The most common form is shouting/protesting in the "parliament" of streets. As for the national scale, there is the "people power" and the violent form of it, which is mutiny/Coup d'Etat.
There are still a lot of issues to tackle if this system is implemented in a wider scale such as the university-wide elections. Strike hard while the iron is still hot. We are the hope of the fatherland, blah! blah! blah! For now, we just write the code and ignore the big politics.
