Last Tuesday, at around noon, I saw a question pop up on the group chat of the Comelec beat reporters, asking me if it was true that former Chairman Sixto Brillantes had passed away. Within minutes after that first query, I was inundated by calls, texts, e-mails, instant messages, and comments on my various social-media platforms, all asking me the exact same thing. It turns out that yes, at 11:08 that morning, Chair Brillantes had lost his battle with Covid-19. He would have been 81 on August 14.
One of the country’s foremost election lawyers, Brillantes left behind a thriving practice when he was personally selected by then President Benigno Simeon Aquino III to lead the Comelec. He took over from Justice Jose A.R. Melo who managed the successful transition of the country to the Automated Election System in 2010. Brillantes assumed office as Comelec chairman on January 16, 2011.
As Comelec chairman, Brillantes successfully guided the conduct of the 2013 National and Local Elections, and was instrumental in establishing many of the transparency measures for automated elections that are still in use today. Foremost of these, despite encountering difficulties in those early days, was the Local Source Code Review. He was a dedicated advocate for electoral management reform, strengthening and empowering the Campaign Finance Office which, to this day, vigorously pursues its mandate to hold candidates accountable for their campaign spending. But Brillantes sought to do more than just get candidates to own up to their expenses. He wanted to really get down to the nuts and bolts of electoral fraud and, if only things had gone differently, he would have succeeded in throwing a massive wrench into the vote buying machinery.
The unfortunately nicknamed “money ban” would have empowered law enforcement to require persons caught in possession of huge amounts of cash around election day, to explain the provenance of the money—where it was from and what it was intended to be used for. This was a solution born out of the insight that vote buying is, by and large, a cash transaction at the level of the individual voter. This means that in the days immediately leading up to polls, election fraudsters circulate in barangays carrying around huge amounts of cash in small denominations, ready for distribution. If a money ban (there’s that ridiculously catchy misnomer again) were in place, people caught with such cash would have to prove that they weren’t vote buyers, effectively taking them out of the game just long enough for the opportunity to buy votes to pass.
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court halted the implementation of the measure, on the strength of apprehensions about its application. To this day, I still think the idea was sound, even if actually implementing it would be a tricky exercise. I suppose in the future, with vote buying still being one of the major sources of electoral fraud, there will be opportunities to revisit this idea. Hopefully, even then, people will remember that it was Brillantes who first stood up for it.
A staunch defender of the integrity of the Comelec, Brillantes went after those who sought to undermine public confidence in the electoral system, sanctioning actions that would bring violators of election laws to justice. He authorized several joint sting operations with the National Bureau of Investigation, for example, to net people claiming to have inside access to the automated election system. And he famously aligned the Comelec with the Department of Justice to ensure the prosecution of several high profile election sabotage cases.
Internally, he was just as zealous. Within the Comelec, Brillantes kept a strict eye out for malfeasance and embarked on an unprecedented campaign to “clean house”. On the eve of the 2016 elections, Brillantes retired, leaving behind a body of work that by any measure would rank his chairmanship as one of the most consequential in Comelec history.