Government shoots down BPO group’s political dream
By Juan Dela Cruz

It was the world’s first political party for BPO employees. A few months after creating waves of publicity and generating huge interest among BPO employees, ACCAP (Association of call center and BPO agents of the Philippines) has been denied participation and entry into the Philippine Congress, at least for this year’s election.

One of the top officials of this call center agent political group ACCAP had phoned me yesterday to say that their burgeoning political campaign has hit a brick wall because the Philippine government, particularly the Commission on Elections, has formally denied their appeal to participate in the May 2010 elections. The same source also emailed me their upcoming official public statement for their supporters indicating that the Commission does not recognize this BPO political group as a viable and credible candidate for a Congress seat. As stated in Philippine election laws, any such group should be able to prove their worthiness by having a traditional physically established grassroots support from different provinces, have a physical office and adequate financial capacity.

In ACCAP’s previous appeal, they have stated that their support primarily comes from the huge online communities of BPO professionals who are mostly active on the net. This was their reason behind not having met most of the Commission’s requirements, and have instead used online campaigning for their targeted voters who they project to number up to 750,000 BPO employees at this point in time. However, being in fact composed of retired public servants, the Commission on Elections officials does not believe any such political group can win an election through online supporters, not in the Philippines at least. The same officials also doubt the credibility of ACCAP’s claimed online supporters as their numbers cannot be fully quantified to their satisfaction.

But the battle goes on for the intrepid members and officers of the ACCAP group. Getting shut down was not the end of the road for them.  By sheer genius, their leaders have decided to partner and join forces with another similar political group who has already won favor of government officials to run for office this coming election. The BPO political group is now hand in hand with AKMA (Aksyon Magsasaka Partido Tinig ng Masa), an indigent farmers’ political group to field in candidates and get at least 2-3 Congressmen elected from within both their groups. In this arrangement, ACCAP campaigns for both parties online while AKMA’s grassroots supporters will take care of traditional offline public campaigning.

The fight continues for ACCAP and these developments have not hindered any of their ongoing online campaigns. Although their dream was shut down temporarily, it was not totally killed to become the world’s first independent BPO employee political group in the world.

(For similar stories, tips and comments please email me at 1delacruise at Gmail dot com)