i-site’s 2007 Election Files

(UPDATED) As always, the devil is in the numbers.

More than six weeks after the May 14 elections, the controversy surrounding the Maguindanao elections has yet to be resolved. It all started with the supposed 12-0 shutout win of administration candidates in the province. This was followed by news of provincial elections supervisor Lintang Bedol saying that municipal certificates of canvass (MCoCs) were stolen, only to backtrack later by saying they were simply missing. Bedol himself went “missing” twice despite repeated summons from the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

Following the news of allegations of massive cheating in the province, the poll body ordered a recanvass of the results. The special body created to conduct the canvass had to resort to the second and fourth copies of MCoCs. The recanvassing of votes cast in the 22 towns resulted into a total of 195,823 votes for Team Unity candidate Juan Miguel Zubiri, and 67,111 for Genuine Opposition bet Aquilino Pimentel III.

While Pimentel remains ahead of the race, the latest tally today shows that Pimentel now only has a slim lead of 2,700. He earlier had a lead of 4,293; prior to the canvass, Pimentel was leading by 111,000. The results from Basilan, Zamboanga del Sur, Lanao del Sur, and towns Binan, Laguna and Bogo, Cebu will determine the 12th winning senator.

In Maguindanao, a look at the election results there reveals highly improbable figures and surprisingly high voter turnout.

Comparing the results from the “original” provincial certificate of canvass — which was set aside by the national board of canvassers — with the new set of documents shows unusual decreases and increases in the votes for certain senatorial candidates (see table).

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WITH the canvassing of senatorial votes scheduled in Maguindanao today, poll watchdogs are set to file administrative and criminal charges against election supervisor Lintang Bedol, who is at the center of the controversial 12-0 win of administration candidates in the province.

Bedol, who figured in the “Hello, Garci” scandal in the 2004 elections, had repeatedly defied the summons of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to appear before the poll body and explain why the municipal certificates of canvass (CoCs) were all of a sudden missing. Bedol appeared only once during the national canvassing, but failed to explain the reason behind the incident; he earlier said they were stolen. The original set of CoCs may show the truth behind the “statistically improbable” results in the provincial CoC.

With Bedol again missing, poll watchdog Legal Network for Truthful Elections (Lente) over the weekend decided to file charges against the Maguindanao election official, and possibly, seek his disbarment and dismissal from the Comelec. The charges will be based on Section II, Chapter V of the Revised Penal Code regarding “infidelity in the custody of document.”

Under the law, any public officer guilty of removing, destroying, or concealing documents officially entrusted to him shall suffer imprisonment, which could reach up to 12 years.

Text messages were circulating over the weekend, saying that Bedol, in panic, had burned all copies of the provincial CoC. In an Inquirer report, Bedol allegedly burned the copies so that there would be no evidence against the 12-0 win of the TU candidates. Bedol, a source alleged, changed the figures of the provincial CoC.

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SHORT of saying “We told you so,” election watchdog Kontra Daya blames Commission on Elections (Comelec) chairman Benjamin Abalos Sr. for the fiasco in Maguindanao, where reports of large-scale cheating and results-tampering have again pulled down the poll body’s already low credibility.

Kontra Daya spokesman Fr. Joe Dizon says his group repeatedly met with Abalos and warned him against allowing Comelec officials who were mentioned in the “Hello Garci” tapes from seeing action in Mindanao, among them Maguindanao elections supervisor Lintang Bedol.

To refresh your memories on how Bedol figured in the “Hello, Garci” recordings, click here and here.

“We were yelled at by Abalos,” says Fr. Dizon, when his group requested the transfer or exclusion of the so-called “Hello Garci” personnel from the 2007 elections. He says among those who were with him in that meeting were former Vice President Teofisto Guingona, Bishop Deogracias Iñiguez and several other Kontra Daya convenors.

“He asked us to file charges, although the Comelec on its own, can and should investigate the ‘Hello Garci’ issue,” said Dizon.

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IN 1986, then National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) chairman Jose Concepcion Jr. crisscrossed the country, talking to the families of Namfrel volunteers who had been killed while guarding the ballots.

There was the boy, also a Namfrel volunteer, who cried “Itay, Itay! (Father, Father!),” as his father’s coffin was slowly lowered to the ground.

There was a teacher in Mambusao, Capiz, who was shot in the back as he attempted to escape with ballots that he had wrapped in a Philippine flag.

Twenty years later, there is still a slight catch to Concepcion’s voice as he recalls how he embraced the man’s widow. Neither of them could speak.

“Somehow they could never forget the role that they played. Because it wasn’t us. Because Namfrel was the Bantay ng Bayan ng ating mga mamamayan (People’s Watch). It was their election, it was their victory.”

It was also in 1986 that a jubilant throng in Edsa hoisted Concepcion onto their shoulders as they chanted, “Namfrel, Namfrel.”

Namfrel’s credibility had come under a cloud of doubt when the PCIJ interviewed him last year for its multimedia presentation on 20 years of Edsa 1. Even then, Concepcion had already begun to speak of a new direction for the election watchdog: it would no longer conduct a parallel vote count, even as it continued to keep its eyes on the vote.

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TODAY’S special elections in Lanao del Sur assume a particular significance as the voting results — with 96,229 votes at stake — will have a bearing on the last three contested seats in the senatorial race (see the latest tally), as well as on the standing of groups vying for party-list seats. Such a situation, many observers say, again opens the electoral exercise in the province to possibilities of cheating operations similar to the 2004 elections.

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) had earlier declared a failure of elections in 13 municipalities in Lanao del Sur — Bayang, Binidayan, Butig, Kapai, Kapatagan, Lumba Bayabao, Lumbatan, Lumbayanague, Madalum, Marogong, Masiu, Pualas, and Sultan Dumalondong.

On May 14, poll officers refused to serve in the polls because of harassment from armed men believed to be aligned with warring political candidates. Armed goons reportedly roamed several towns, firing their guns, scaring people and election officials.

Locals blamed the lack of police and soldiers for the failure of elections. To address this, thousands of soldiers had been deployed to provide security for the elections today. Former Philippine National Police chief Arturo Lomibao and retired Major General Jovito Palparan are personally monitoring the security arrangements. (Palparan said he will also personally monitor the elections to protect the votes of his party-list group, Bantay.)

Comelec Commissioner Rene Sarmiento, commissioner-in-charge of elections in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), also formed a special team of election officers for today’s polls. Locals however expect that cheating will occur, especially during the counting of ballots, where vote-padding and -shaving could be done.

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SUDDENLY, Namfrel’s much-vaunted speedy parallel tally of the votes has gone slow-mo.

Not so long ago, the organization otherwise known as the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections used to be way ahead of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) when it came to counting ballots. But as the sidebar to the latest piece in i Report’s election series observes, today the other way around. The mighty have fallen…asleep.

Actually, Namfrel has been suffering from one system breakdown to another in the last two weeks. Perhaps it’s nerves; after the fiasco of 2004 where its experiment with SMS went awfully awry, Namfrel can be forgiven for still being a bit jittery when it comes to using technology. Now, however, even some observers are developing tics just from watching its performance.

Read on at pcij.org.

CALL it the poll watching equivalent of a military carpet-bombing: election-monitoring groups have not only multiplied in number since 2004, they have now gone beyond conducting parallel tallies that were first made popular by the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) some two decades ago.

These days, several of the newer organizations say they will keep their eyes on election-related matters long after the canvassing of votes is over and long after all the winners in the recently concluded polls have been proclaimed.
With questions about the 2004 elections still unresolved, many people have welcomed the proliferation of poll monitors. And now that election cheats seemed to have gone really garapal (which can be translated to being thick-faced, but scandalously bold may be more like it), the presence of watchdogs has become even more crucial.

The latest piece in i Report’s current series on the elections gives the lowdown on some of the more prominent election monitoring groups and what they have been up to so far.

Read on at pcij.org.

AFTER what many believe to be questionable results of the elections in Maguindanao that showed a “clean sweep” of the the senatorial race by administration candidates, the focus of attention should shift to another province in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao — Lanao del Sur.

There is fear of yet another possible manipulation of election results with the Commission on Elections declaring a failure of elections in 13 of the province’s 39 municipalities last May 14. Special elections have been scheduled on May 26.

The public apprehension is not without basis as the situation bears an uncanny resemblance to that of 2004, when special elections were also held on May 22, 2004 in 200 precincts in Lanao del Sur.

Read PCIJ reports on the Lanao del Sur elections in 2004:

• The Lanao del Sur vote
• Lanao’s dirty secret
• Did Mike Arroyo fund postelection ’special operations in Lanao del Sur?
• Dagdag-bawas, Lanao style
• More ‘telling’ evidence of 2004 electoral fraud in Lanao

Votes were still being counted in Lanao’s seven municipalities, as well as in five barangays of Lanao del Norte, when Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was caught making calls to former Comelec commissioner Virgilio Garcillano in the “Hello, Garci” recordings from May 26 to June 10, 2004 in an alleged conspiracy to influence the outcome of the elections.

Arroyo later on apologized to the nation for making such calls, which she acknowledged as a “lapse in judgment.” But she denied the phone conversations were meant to influence the results of the 2004 polls since “the election results were already in and the votes had been counted.”

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(This report was written by PCIJ interns Glenys Banal and Luis Liberato)

TWO teams of international observers today expressed disappointment with the recently held midterm elections.

The 16-member team of the Compact for Peaceful Elections said a sense of resignation over the electoral process, fraud, and violence dominated the conduct of the 2007 elections.

The 27 observers of the People’s International Observers’ Mission agreed, stating that the significant number of disenfranchised voters, vote-buying, deadly election-related violence, direct intimidation of the armed forces, the suspicious absence and abandonment of duties of Commission on Elections (Comelec) officials, and the overt coercion by candidates of powerful political clans ran contrary to the Palace’s statement that Filipino voters “cast their ballot, free of coercion and according to their own will.”

Another delegation of foreign observers from the Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL) earlier reported similar findings of widespread violence, blatant vote-buying, and election irregularities in the Muslim Mindanao provinces.

Read the report of the People’s International Observers’ Mission here and the observations of the Compact for Peaceful Elections here.

Lawrence Surendra of Compact said factors such as “the failure to enforce election laws, the weakness of the party system, and legal loopholes” make the polls prone to fraud and violence.

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MALACAÑANG strategists are trumpeting the news of a 12-0 sweep by Team Unity senatorial candidates of the Maguindanao elections as the vaunted power of the administration’s political machinery at work through bloc voting.

With TU bets trailing in early tallies by both the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) and the Commission on Elections (Comelec), Malacañang has claimed that “command votes” from its bailiwicks would eventually put them in the senatorial winning circle.

As of the morning of May 16, with 73 percent of the votes in the province’s 27 towns counted, Mindanews reported that the administration ticket was lording it over the opposition in the Maguindanao tally, with Ilocos Sur Governor Luis “Chavit” Singson emerging as the surprise top vote-getter with 136,044 votes out of a total of 336,774 registered voters. Singson was followed by Bukidnon Representative Juan Miguel Zubiri (133,321 votes), and former Senator Tito Sotto (132,103 votes).

But a bewildered Commissioner Rene Sarmiento, the poll commissioner-in-charge assigned to ARMM during the May 14 elections, remarked that this is the first time he has heard of such a result, and said that the Commission on Elections will have to look into the matter.

They should, especially with how the elections turned out last Monday in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Foreign observers were witness to how the polls in the region’s six provinces were marred by widespread violence, blatant vote-buying and election irregularities.

Moreover, the Maguindanao tally brings to mind the suspicious results of the 2004 elections that came from the region, whose votes helped ensure Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s victory by a 1.1 million-vote lead over Fernando Poe Jr.

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