ISSUE ANALYSIS No. 08
May 20, 2007

Every inch that the state's security agencies and other operatives of the fraud machinery rob the people of their conscience votes is a step closer to the people's abandoning the election as a failed system and taking other political options in pursuit of their democratic interests.

ELECTION AS REPRESSION

President Gloria M. Arroyo and Benjamin Abalos, Sr., chair of the Commission on Elections (Comelec), this week praised the May 14 mid-term elections as "generally fair and peaceful," with the latter dismissing reports of rampant cheating and other irregularities. The only hitch there is that both Mrs. Arroyo and Abalos have a very low trust rating among Filipinos.

Soon, Mrs. Arroyo and Abalos will have to account again for what is emerging to be the involvement of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), Philippine National Police (PNP), and local Comelec officials in what has been exposed as an unprecedented and systematic plot to rob the progressive Party-list bloc and candidates from the Genuine Opposition (GO) of their votes through physical intimidation, vote-shaving and other means of fraud.

"Progressive Party-list" (PPL) bloc is a term used by the media to refer to party lists Bayan Muna (BM), Anakpawis (AP), Gabriela Women's Party (GWP), Suara Bangsamoro (SB) and Kabataan (youth) Party. BM, along with AP and GWP, has consistently topped the party-list elections since 2001 showing a high preference for them by many Filipino voters over other groups.

Massive voters' disenfranchisement, vote-shaving, vote-buying and other types of election fraud affected not only the progressive Party-lists but also many candidates of the anti-administration Genuine Opposition (GO). In the end, however, it was a big loss to a significant number of the electorate who saw their votes squelched or were denied their right to go to the precincts.

A news story of the Philippine Star daily (Star, May 13, 2007) quotes Lt. Gen. Rodolfo Obaniana, chief of the AFP's Eastern Mindanao command, as admitting that he had campaigned vigorously against the party-list groups because they were "fronts of the NPA rebels." The general's admission suggests that Oplan Bantay Laya, the AFP's counter-insurgency program that has been denounced in the Philippines and abroad for the extra-judicial killings and other forms of human rights violations that were committed under its name, has taken inroads into the electoral process which is supposed to be free from partisan meddling by government and its machineries. Comelec has apparently been toothless over the partisan operations conducted by security forces or worse, its provincial officials appeared to be complicit or were at least remiss in their election duties.

Military election operations

Some of the many accounts of military and police interference before, during and after the May 14 elections, which have generally remained unreported by the commercial press, are the following:

In Negros Occidental, weeks before the elections troops from the Philippine Army's 61st Infantry Battalion held military operations in Kabankalan, Bacolod and other towns warning villagers not to vote for any of the progressive Party-list bloc. In a dialogue organized by local officials and attended by the CHR and representatives of the party-lists, Army officers denied they were involved in "election campaign" but only "to educate the people." Not one Comelec official was present in the dialogue and the government poll body itself, a BM leader complained, showed no interest in looking into the complaint.

Soldiers from the Army's 42nd IB called it "Information Caravan and Integrated Defense System" (ITDS-Alsa Masa), a series of seminars they and other provincial officials organized in several towns of Camarines Sur. The organizers, said a municipal councilor, campaigned against BM and its allied party-lists and told the participants to vote for Dato Arroyo, son of the President who was running for a House seat. "The military warned us that we would be branded as NPAs if Bayan Muna or Gabriela wins," the councilor said. Similar cases were reported in Sorsogon, Albay and other provinces of the Bicol region.

Other reports reaching the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG) as of May 19 told of similar incidents: In Pantukan town, Compostela Valley, Mindanao soldiers reportedly conducted house-to-house campaigns against the same party-list groups; in North Cotabato and other provinces of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), soldiers were seen tearing down campaign posters aside from conducting smear campaigns against the party-list groups; and in Nasugbu, Batangas members of the Philippine AirForce blocked Gabriela poll watchers from entering polling precincts.

Elsewhere, in Guimba, Nueva Ecija soldiers pressured residents not to vote for the party-list groups and to vote instead for Bantay, the government-backed party of alleged rights violator, former Brig. Gen. Jovito Palparan; in La Union two Kabataan Party poll watchers were blocked by the military from entering the provincial canvassing center on May 17; and in Tondo and other communities of the National Capital Region (NCR), the presence of soldiers near polling precincts was reported by foreign election observers contrary to military claims that the troops who had been deployed in 27 barangays had been pulled out days before the eve of election.

In the week of the elections, two young poll watchers and two peasant activists were killed in two separate incidents May 15 in Capalonga, Camarines Norte and Baggao, Cagayan, allegedly by military men. Another poll watcher of BM went missing on May 18 in Abulog, Cagayan Valley where three days earlier he was barred by police and armed goons from observing the canvassing of votes.

Poll-related killings, abductions and harassment involving military and police men were recorded in 38 cases in the week of the elections, the independent Task Force Poll Watch (TFPW) reported on May 18.

Incidence of fraud

Initial and partial reports released by the TFPW, Kontra Daya, the People's International Observers Mission (IOM) and the progressive Party-lists showed the incidence of violence and fraud committed against the progressive bloc and GO candidates taking place in at least 36 provinces so far, with about nine of them in Mindanao alone.

Moreover, massive vote-shaving in 10 provinces cut down by as much as 73 percent the votes for the PPLs and opposition candidate Loren Legarda in two days of canvassing, May 16 and 17. Other reports of major incidents of vote-shaving and other forms of cheating are starting to surface in southern Philippines particularly in Muslim provinces including Tukuran, Zamboanga del Sur where election returns (ERs) were reportedly taken to military headquarters.

The vote-shaving, a BM leader said, was "a massacre of votes, and we could only guess who are benefiting from the votes stolen from us and the Filipino people."

If reports of the partisan operations of the military, police and other agencies in the elections are true, then not only were the rights of the duly-accredited PPLs and opposition candidates violated but more so of the voters themselves. The security institutions of the state overstepped their bounds not only by their alleged involvement in the politically-motivated killings but also by despoiling what is vaunted to be a democratic electoral exercise. Once again, what is widely believed to be the Arroyo government's fraud machinery was at work in the elections and qualifies it as another argument for the removal of the President and in making her accountable as well to violations of the constitution and other public crimes. It has actually added credence and proof to allegations of massive fraud committed by Mrs. Arroyo's fraud machinery in 2004.

Comelec Chair Abalos will also have to do a lot of explaining since in many of the incidents of fraud and military harassment, local election officials did nothing or simply told the protesters to withdraw their complaints. The actuations of the Comelec and its officials are another case for a sweeping revamp of the agency, as poll watch groups, Party-list groups and other sectors engaged in the electoral arena have been demanding. Unless it is reformed to make it truly independent, transparent and accountable to the people, the Comelec cannot possibly ensure a credible election.

Every inch that the state's security agencies and other operatives of the fraud machinery rob the people of their conscience votes is a step closer for the people's abandoning the election as a failed system and taking other political options in pursuit of their democratic interests.

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