i-site’s 2007 Election Files

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 many ways, the recently held midterm elections were a more-of-the-same affair, with the usual reports of disenfranchised voters on election day; the massive vote-buying and patented cheating operations to manipulate the results perpetrated during the voting, counting and canvassing of votes; and the high casualty count from poll-related violence.

That the May elections were “dirty,” however, also assumed a routinely literal meaning. Because, in spite of the initial display of political will by the Commission on Elections (Comelec), it proved futile in preventing the avalanche of election campaign materials from swamping every conceivable area all over the country in the few weeks leading to the polls.

This perennial “wastefulness” of the May elections has so exasperated a coalition of environmental advocacy groups that it has called on the Comelec to adopt “green electoral reforms” that would dramatically alter the way election campaigns are conducted in the country.

“We find that the Comelec did not exercise sufficient leadership to ensure that the elections would not only be free of fraud, but also of trash during and after the three-month campaign period,” said Rei Panaligan, coordinator of the EcoWaste Coalition. “To halt this massive assault against Mother Nature, the Comelec has to institute a zero-waste policy that will green and ensure that election activities conform with the country’s electoral and environmental laws.”

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THE precinct results are coming in.

So far, Halalang Marangal (Halal) has been able to post the results of precincts from Regions 1 to 12, the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, the Cordillera Autonomous Region, Region 13 (Caraga), and the National Capital Region on its website.

View Halal’s tabulation of precinct results here.

The poll watchdog has run into a bottleneck when it comes to encoding though, says Halal convenor Roberto Verzola.

Halal had earlier tried to implement an SMS-based system, but its volunteers said that it was too expensive to send precinct results through text. They would need eight messages to download the list of candidates and party-list organizations, and another eight messages to send the list. Thus, sending the precinct results through text would cost approximately P50 per volunteer.

“It’s quite steep to ask from volunteers, and the message we got was (that this amount) was quite large,” says Verzola.

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WIN or lose, candidates are urged to clean up the mess left by three months of the election campaign in posters, streamers, and other propaganda materials.

The appeal came from the EcoWaste Coalition, a network of nonprofit groups dealing with waste and pollution issues, which conducted a combined clean-up drive along Del Monte and Roosevelt Avenues with Quezon City Mayor Feliciano “Sonny” Belmonte, Rep. Vincent “Bingbong” Crisologo, the city’s Environmental Protection and Solid Waste Department and other agencies.

“Now that the people have spoken through the ballots, we call on all political parties, party-list groups and candidates to waste no time in tidying up all the poster-plastered trees, walls and electric posts,” said Rei Panaligan, coordinator of the EcoWaste Coalition. “We cannot just leave the post-campaign clean-up to our overworked street sweepers.”

Panaligan said groups and individuals who ran in the recently-concluded elections, regardless of their polling performance, should actively lead the post-election cleanup, including removing all campaign posters and banners and recycling the trash.

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ANOTHER team of foreign observers from Asia has been deployed in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) to observe the elections in the region’s six provinces.

Accredited by the Commission on Elections (Comelec), the team of 21 international election observers from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia is part of the election observation mission coordinated by the Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL), in collaboration with the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) and six partner Muslim civil-society organizations.

This brings to three the number of international observer missions in the country monitoring the May 14 elections. Sixteen foreign observers are taking part in the mission organized by the Compact for Clean and Honest Elections (Compact) deployed in various election hotspots to document and report election-related fraud and violence.

Thirty more foreign observers are with the International Mission Against Electoral Fraud and Violence convened by groups led by the United Church of Christ of the Philippines. They are now in 13 areas in eight regions where the probability of electoral fraud is high.

The ANFREL team has been in the country since May 5 and whose members are now deployed in each of the six ARMM provinces. The team is led by Ms. Somsri Hananuntasuk, director of ANFREL and board member of the Thai Action for Democracy in Burma (TACDB), and Mr. Mukhtar Ahmad Ali, executive director of the Pakistan Center for Peace and Development Initiatives and executive council Member of the Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN). The observer mission is supported by The Asia Foundation and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

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WITH the aim of screening out candidates unfit for public service, a Church-based group came up with the LASER test, a set of questions that can guide voters in tomorrow’s elections.”

The LASER (Lifestyle, Action, Supporters, Election Conduct, Reputation) questions are meant to raise the quality and standards of our politics and politicians,” the Cebu-based Dilaab Foundation Inc. said in a statement. The questions focus on whether candidates are involved in graft and corruption or supported by drug lords.

Dilaab used the same test in the 2004 elections and reported that at least one candidate known to be in cahoots with drug lords did not get elected.

The group however refuses to disclose its findings for this elections, but it has encouraged other groups who have applied the LASER test to candidates to share its findings with others. The questionnaire was disseminated to bishops and seminaries nationwide.

Below is the LASER test:

LIFESTYLE: “Does he or she have unexplained wealth?”

Public officials are mandated by the 1987 Constitution to lead modest lives. The lifestyle-check program, used by anti-corruption NGOs, judges whether public officials lead modest lives or not.

There are concrete steps people can do to determine the lifestyle of candidates.

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THIRTEEN senatorial candidates signed a social contract to fight poverty and inequality in the country, promising to push for anti-poverty measures once elected into office.

The contract will help the global anti-poverty alliance Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP)-Philippines to remind the winning senators on their promise to support legislative measures on the following themes:

1. Transparency, accountability, and good governance
2. Pro-poor and equitable distribution of growth
3. Realization of workers’ rights
4. Protection of the dignity and rights of migrant workers
5. Public investments in basic health, education, water and sanitation
6. Upholding public interest in the context of privatization of public utilities
7. Fight against the loss and misappropriation of national funds.

The candidates who committed to the policy provisions stated in the social contract are: Genuine Opposition senatorial bets Alan Peter Cayetano, Panfilo Lacson, Nikki Coseteng, Francis Escudero, Aquilino Pimentel III, Antonio Trillanes IV, Sonia Roco, Loren Legarda, and Manny Villar; Ang Kapatiran Party bets Martin Bautista, Zosimo Paredes, and Adrian Sison; and independent candidate Gregorio Honasan.

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BEGINNING today, Labor Day, election-related information is only a phone call away.

Gabay Halalan, the same call-center service provided by Simbahang Lingkod ng Bayan (SLB) and Life Academy in cooperation with the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) in the 2004 elections, is being made available again in time for the May 14, 2007 elections.

By dialing the five-digit number 10-149 using a PLDT phone, voters anywhere around the country can get access to relevant information for free to help them make enlightened choices in the coming polls.

A tele-educator is available to provide callers data on candidates’ profiles and stand on issues, party-list groups, and their precincts (courtesy of Findprecinct.com). There are also information for first time voters, and on how citizens can get involved in the coming electoral exercise.

Callers can also inquire about election-related legal matters and report election-related incidents like prohibited acts and other violations.

The service is especially helpful for Filipino voters who do not have access to the Internet or those who are unable to read. Gabay Halalan tele-educators will entertain calls from May 1 to 15, 2007, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Meanwhile, Gabay Halalan announces that it still needs Metro Manila-based volunteers to work as tele-educators. If you want to volunteer, please call the SLB office at 4266101 or dial 10-149 and look for Marj.

GENUINE Opposition (GO) candidates are the “greenest” of all senatorial bets, the results of the 2007 Green Electoral Initiative (GEI) survey show.

Topping the survey is GO candidate and political neophyte Sonia Roco, followed by Loren Legarda, Aquilino Pimentel III, Manny Villar Jr. Independent candidate Gringo Honasan also made it to the top five green circle. Team Unity’s Miguel Zubiri, who describes himself as an avid environmentalist, did not rank high on the list. (View GEI overall rating.)

The month-long survey, conducted by environmental groups Greenpeace, EcoWaste Coalition, and Kaisampalad, ranked all senatorial candidates from a green to gray spectrum. (Click on image below for a larger view.)

A candidate’s “greenness” was based on one’s stand and track record on key environmental issues such as climate change, waste trade and the Japan-Philippine Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA), genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), sustainable agriculture, deforestation, and air and water pollution. (See questionnaire)

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BARELY a month left in the campaign, reproductive health issues have yet to figure prominently in the platforms of candidates running for public office in the coming May elections.

Population watchdogs attribute this apparent reluctance among candidates to include population and family planning in their platforms to their fear of losing in the elections if they antagonize certain influential sectors like the Catholic Church, which has time and again opposed alternative family planning methods other than the natural one.

But the Philippine Legislators’ Committee on Population and Development Foundation (PLCPD) said such indecision is baseless, citing the recent Pulse Asia Ulat ng Bayan Survey showing nearly eight out of 10 or 76 percent of Filipinos placing considerable importance on family planning as an election issue.

The March 2007 survey also revealed that one in every two Filipinos (52 percent) actually think that candidates who will support family planning will help them win in the elections. Forty-four percent of respondents likewise think that the Church must not involve itself in the issue compared to 33 percent who say otherwise.

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