On Tuesday, October 4th, a small number of citizens walked into the Palau Election Commission (PEC) office and refused to leave after they saw what was happening. I was one of them. What I saw in front of my eyes was surreal. I’ll try to describe it as clear as I can.
Late that day around 4:30pm, which was also the last tabulation day of Palau’s 2016 Primary Election, I received a tip that a ballot box has been opened in PEC and that they were “sorting” ballots before going to the designated tabulation center. Of course, as a Palauan and a voting citizen, I had to go.
In a smaller office within a room in the PEC Office, about three people (I could be off with the number as it was a commotion-filled event) were standing in front of a white long table and were sorting the small white ballot envelops into piles and marking what seemed to be a list. One wearing a baseball hat that made his attire look like street clothes. Sitting on that same table was a large ballot box labeled “ABSENTEE BOX” with its padlock visibly unlocked. A large brown box with postal marks with its flaps open looked like it was tossed on the floor. Outside that smaller room, a pile of white envelops marked “return to sender” sit on another desk. Heck the whole place was in disarray.
All of this was happening in the midst of a chaotic environment where the office staff were literally yelling at us and marching around the office. Two board members were there and were trying to handle the situation by explaining “the process” and telling us to put our complaints in writing.
All the while, in front of that small room where the ballot box was opened, I stood irresolute on my belief in democracy. I often read about people’s defining moments in their careers and political life but never fully understood how people label certain moments in their lives as “defining.” Well now I know what it feels like, because that moment standing in front of that small room was my defining moment. It’s a moment in time where beliefs, ideals, faith, memories, nostalgia, hopes, and emotions converge into one single moment. The moment then lasts and bothers you for days and begins to re-define who you are. It wrestles with your conscience and your identity.
You have to understand, I was a little girl growing up in the end of the 80s to the early 90s where my memories are filled with sleepless nights waiting for my father who often returned home late from political party meetings; of talks of “progressives” and “liberals”; of mornings spent at the old Sure Save Mart’s coffee room filled with the smell of fried chicken as he and his friends discuss politics, all the while footage of the Gulf War played on the background; of him talking to mother about a better future; of that dreamy day called the 1st Independence Day celebrated at Asahi Field where a man parachuted down from the sky. Then I grew up and he encouraged me at every opportunity to study, to be political, to be bold and fearless in a world dominated by men because the new world of democracy makes it all possible.
All of that promise of such a world came crashing down at my defining moment. I stood there… shocked. I drove home, made two stops, talked to and saw other people, but was still shocked once alone in the car. I repeatedly read the PEC rules and regulations that I downloaded on my phone during the heated event. Section 11 states:
After all the voting has been completed, all ballot boxes shall be secured and locked. Such locks shall only be removed publicly at the officially designated counting and tabulation center. (http://palauelection.org)
What I saw and what their rules convey didn’t line up at all. Why did they have to open the locked box in private? I then spent the next day feeling numb and tuned-out. That next night, I cried in the shower because I felt betrayed and overwhelmed but can’t really put my finger on what or whom to blame.
And while it’s easier and safer to look away, such times test our morality. As Martin Luther King said in his Beyond Vietnam speech, “Some of us who have begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak.” Indeed, the struggle of whether or not to speak is agonizing, but I must follow the call of conscience.
Even tough almost a week has passed, I still can’t shake the feeling of distrust and ambivalence I feel towards somebody or something. Perhaps it’s the older generation, perhaps not. Perhaps it’s the system. Or perhaps, it’s democracy itself, I’m not sure. The integrity of the electoral process has been compromised, whether it’s illegal or standard procedure as they claim, I don’t believe that opening ballot boxes behind close doors out of the public’s eye should ever be accepted by any democratic society. And while some are saying that we were disturbing PEC staff while they were doing their job, I stand firm in my belief that what I and other citizens saw was unjust. As St. Augustine once said, “An unjust law is no law at all.”
Legal or not, the “process” we witnessed that very day has wounded a system I once revered. This should not be brushed off as a glitch, but rather a serious problem that needs redress. The question is, who in the upper echelons will set it right?
Signed,
Wounded
Palau Matters 