Because of their religiosity, a joke goes, Boholanos are sometimes more Catholic than the Pope. The province, in fact, has one of the most number of priests and nuns in the country. The devotion to Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus borders on near fanaticism.

The BCBP-sponsored "Be Honest" - even if others do not, cannot - are all over the place - in streamers, media and even tricycles.

Sadly, however, when it comes to election, morality flies out of the window. Everyone seems to be for sale - "if the price is right." This is the kind of religiosity in words - but not in practice, that, woefully, many of us are guilty of. Shame on us!

Dirty and expensive are two ways to describe elections in Bohol. There are worse adjectives that cannot be printed here.

The fact that no real bloodshed occurred does not mean that Bohol had a clean and orderly election. There are some deaths that do not require the absence of life.

The death of democracy, for instance, only requires that one who has more gold claims his stewardship over a territory he does not deserve. And believe you us, the greed for power and largesse, made politicians and their supporters spend millions to direct the results of elections to their likings. Is this true representative democracy?

We had simplified our criteria for a sound public official - competence and integrity. By buying the votes of the electorate, he certainly failed in the second criterion. The morality of vote buying is akin to bribing the one who has the power - to withhold a parking space that has been paid for by someone, a clerical position from a deserving applicant and a student's seat in the classroom when he had paid the tuition as a qualified, bona fide student.

Yet, again, sadly, many of us take vote buying and bribe taking as an every-three-year bonus exercise, that we all very well know - is one of the chief root causes of corruption in the Philippines - now Asia's most corrupt by world standards. Those of us who participated in this quid pre quo arrangement are all part of this tag. Shame on us!

Take the case of just two towns - Panglao and Loay. There must be some kind of gold mine in these towns for some contenders to mark up the voter buying bids which can put to shame the amounts spent even in places like Manila. There are reports - which we tend to believe - that the voter's price ranged from P2,000 to a magnificent - if shocking - P5,000 - on the day before election.

The argument is that since there are only few voters (relative terms), the bid price, therefore, escalates because the lower numbers (of voters) make the per head bribe affordable. But if that were true, why did these numbers (P2,000-P5,000 price per voter) not happen in most towns - though there was still vote-buying?

Maybe being the crown jewel of the "most preferred island destination" and the gargantuan Panglao international airport - are incentives enough "to die for." In Loay, there are reports that families were offered a package incentive of P10,000 to P20,000 per family. There must be something in Loay as well that must be worth the investments in gold that the clash of titans there predicated their battle on. "What about the pier," some people ask. Yes, can you tell us about it?

This proportion of electoral vote-buying dwarfs the previous elections range of P100 to P500 for an entire ticket. Indeed in politics - and business? - history can change in three years!

The election process has been degraded severely from candidates not having platforms to not having anything at all except a fat bank account and millionaire-supporters who are "investing" in sound political positioning. What is happening to our province, President Caloy Garcia?

Worse, there are unverified accusations that, particularly in the third district where the fight between the Jala and Relampagos factions generated heat that could fry a million eggs (including exaggeration), the final provincial tallies did not, reportedly, reflect what occurred at the precinct levels. The names of Loay and Sierra Bullones have been mentioned so often as - the "hot" places. Is an electoral protest in the House of Representatives in the offing? Does the aggrieved party have enough evidence?

There are areas, however, where the "money factor" was not the X factor that swung election results one way or the other. Yet there was hardly any virtue there - because there just was not enough opposition to contest the candidacies of some.

Still in others - the voters wisened up - for some reason of their own. In Dauis, a losing candidate allegedly spent million before the election but could not match the actual pay-offs on election day and days immediately preceding. Calape, in a way, can become a model town, in spanking vote-buying candidates.

In some positions, the candidate who spent P400 against the opponent's P100 - still lost the election of May 14. It is phenomenon that is pregnant with meaning - that should give a lesson to vote-buyers in the future: that a citizen's vote is not for bidding to the highest bribe-giver.

Until people in our debating society called Congress and the Senate open their eyes about the pending "Electoral Reform Bill" which will force government to subsidize or pay the electoral expenses of all candidates and "uniformize" the media and campaign material in the next elections, we will forever face up to these abominable electoral practices characterized by greed and avarice capitalizing on the poverty of the electorate by asking them to sell their votes - and their dignity.

That is why the sensational, pulse-pounding victory of a priest in Pampanga as new governor - without him buying a single vote or distorting any election return - has been called a "miracle.'

Because in the Philippines, it is.