Mindanao poll fraud detailed

Poll watchers report to Comelec

By Cathy C. Yamsuan, Jolene Bulambot, Charlie Señase, Nash Maulana, Edwin Fernandez
Mindanao Bureau, Inquirer, Visayas Bureau
Last updated 02:34am (Mla time) 05/24/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- Poll watchdogs Wednesday gave detailed accounts of massive vote-buying, flagrant cheating and intimidation -- including death threats to a foreign observer -- in Mindanao during the May 14 elections.

The price of a vote ranged from P1,000 to P7,000 in some areas in Lanao del Sur province, according to the watchdogs’ accounts.

“Not even the Manila city jail can accommodate all the corrupt people in our area,” lawyer Nasser A. Marohomsalic, a member of the executive committee of the legal group Lente, told reporters.

Ranking officers of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel), Legal Network for Truthful Elections (Lente) and Citizens’ Action for Responsible Elections (C-CARE) took turns detailing how rampant cheating took place in Lanao del Sur.

The officers submitted their report to the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

The Comelec has ordered special elections in at least 13 towns in the province, where voting could not be held because of the presence of armed goons.

Marohomsalic said one supporter of a candidate in Ramain-Ditsaan town even had the audacity to offer P300 to a foreign observer, an Indonesian female he identified only as Marini.

Marohomsalic surmised that the person mistook Marini for a Filipino given her Malay features.

“Most buyers were inside the polling precincts coaching voters. Witnesses included local and foreign observers,” the watchdogs said in a statement.

250 votes each; only 169 voters

Marohomsalic said a Pakistani observer asked another person offering bribe money in exchange for votes in Bacolod-Kalawi town if what he was doing wasn’t illegal.

“The person only answered, ‘Do you want me to kill you’? (Gusto mo patayin kita?)’,” Marohomsalic said in a press conference.

Namfrel chair for Marawi City Mama B. Palawan presented an election return (ER) showing all 12 senatorial candidates of Team Unity (TU) sweeping the elections in Barangay Punod.

The TU candidates garnered 250 votes each even if the barangay only had 169 registered voters.

“Maybe even the ghosts voted there,” he remarked.

Palawan said the stranger thing was that an “unheard of” party-list group called NELFFI, or Novelty Entrepreneurship and Livelihood for Food, also swept the party-list race in the same barangay.

Watchers barred

Palawan also noted what he called an “oversupply” in ERs after getting his hands on two ERs with different serial numbers but reporting the same results in a single barangay.

There was also an ER accomplished without the signatures of any of the election inspectors save for a faded thumbmark which Palawan said looked like it was made with “a child’s thumb or a cat’s paw.”

A PPCRV volunteer identified as Nursaide Dipatuan was mauled by still unidentified men inside the campus of the Mindanao State University.

“His face was smashed,” the lawyer said.

The watchdogs’ statement said watchers of PPCRV and another group were denied access by the board of canvassers (BOCs) to polling precincts in several towns.

Marahomsalic said the BOCs were assisted by “members of the (Philippine National Police) and soldiers.”

During the provincial tabulation, said watchers from PPCRV, C-CARE, and Namfrel were not allowed to observe the tabulation of election returns held at the Lanao del Sur provincial capitol and the MSU campus.

Watchers were also barred by BOCs from monitoring the canvassing in Marawi City National High School.

No indelible ink

Other charges detailed in the report to Comelec included:

• Failure to apply indelible ink on the fingers of those who had voted.

• Proliferation of campaign materials inside the polling areas.

• Placement of ballot boxes and other election paraphernalia outside the polling precincts.

In many areas, votes were already being tabulated at the municipal level while ERs remained unaccomplished.

Marohomsalic said volunteers who were raising objections during the tallying at the precincts and during provincial canvassing were simply ignored by canvassers and election inspectors.

The disclosures of flagrant cheating in Lanao del Norte followed revelations earlier this week by a public school teacher in Maguindanao that she and other teachers were forced at gunpoint to fill out ballots with the names of TU candidates.

Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao are part of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) -- scene of alleged cheating in favor of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo during the 2004 presidential election, according to the “Hello Garci” tapes.

Comelec officials in cahoots

Fresh accounts of how cheating supposedly occurred in Maguindanao emerged Wednesday. One account came from a teacher who acted as a member of the board of election inspectors (BEI) in one town of that province.

The alleged Maguindanao fraud gave the TU candidates a sweeping 12-0 victory in the province.

Interviewed through her cellular phone on the program “Arangkada” aired over ABS-CBN-Cebu’s dyAB, the teacher, who identified herself as Bai, accused local Comelec officials, the police and the military of collusion in committing fraud.

Bai reiterated there were no elections in Maguindanao since the teachers were ordered to fill out the ballots starting at 11 p.m. on the eve of the May 14 polls.

She also said that representatives from Namfrel were prohibited from entering voting centers in Shariff Aguak.

Bai said that she knew her life, along with those of the other teachers, was in danger but she had to expose the truth.

She said two other teachers were willing to attest to her statement.

Probe welcomed

Bai said nobody went to the polling precincts on Election Day and that anyone could see that the people who supposedly had voted had no marks of the indelible ink on their fingers.

Another whistle-blower, named “Kareem,” said in Filipino on GMA television network:

“We were given a list of senators. That was what we wrote on the ballot. It was 12-0 for TU,” said Kareem.

“We were the ones who actually wrote the names on the ballots. Look at the handwriting on the ballots. Only three people did it. The handwritings were the same.”

Maguindanao provincial administrator Norie Unas said the provincial government was willing to help in the Comelec probe of alleged election fraud in the province.

“The provincial government is ready to assist them in any way to help clear the festering issue once and for all so this thing will already rest,” Unas said.

Education officials in ARMM Wednesday led hundreds of local public school teachers to the provincial capitol in Shariff Aguak to denounce the unnamed teachers who alleged there was wholesale poll fraud in the province.

“Whoever they are, they should come out into the open with their identities so as not to destroy the image of the other teachers,” local education official Udtog Kawit said.

‘Grand design’

Unas, who is also the spokesperson for Gov. Datu Andal Ampatuan, described the Maguindanao poll controversy as a “grand design” by people not happy with the TU’s 12-0 sweep in the province.

“Why blame us for this. They (the opposition) ought to be blamed for not campaigning in Maguindanao,” Unas said.

TU strategists have said the 12-0 result showed the power of the “command vote” in areas where pro-administration officials hold sway -- such as in Maguindanao, where Ampatuan is regarded as a political kingpin.

Unas bragged about Maguindanao’s “participatory democracy” under Ampatuan.

2 sets of winners

Another problem emerged Wednesday in South Upi town, also in Maguindanao, this time involving the proclamation of two sets of officials.

On May 15, local Comelec chief Monakiram Sambuang proclaimed Abdullah Campong as mayor-elect, Maria Sargan as vice mayor-elect, and eight councilors.

But a second certificate of canvass, or vote tally, showed another set of winning candidates for the town council.

Rodrigo Toriales, one of those on the first list of winners, told radio dxMS he could not understand why strange things always happened in his town.

“We are the sure winners but our names were deleted from the CoC and the Comelec put other names, why?” he asked.

Maguindanao election supervisor Lintang Bedol could not be reached for comment.

source: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view_article.php?article_id=67616

Poll watchdogs learn from Garci: Focus on canvass

MANILA, Philippines

It's the canvassing, stupid.

That's the lesson of "Hello Garci," according to independent poll watchers mobilizing to guard against fraud in the May 14 elections.

In the past, watchers tended to focus more on the conduct of elections -- on the counting at the precinct level and on the integrity of the election returns (ERs), said Carlos Medina, one of the convenors of the newly organized Lente (Legal Network for Truthful Elections).

An ER is the document on which is tallied the 200-250 votes cast per precinct.

"Before there was dagdag-bawas (vote-padding and -shaving), we thought that cheating was mostly done on election day itself, through vote-buying, flying voters, etc., and during the counting. But it is at the canvassing that wholesale fraud is committed; so the 'lesson' is not to lose focus come canvassing time," he said.

Eric Alvia, secretary general of the National Citizens' Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel), echoed Medina's concern: "We only focused on ERs before."

With the country still stuck with manual elections, it takes days for volunteers to start spotting discrepancies between individual ERs and the resulting Certificates of Canvass (COCs), the tally of ERs gathered in a municipality or city, he lamented.

By the time municipal, city and provincial COCs start coming out, "two to four weeks" had already passed since Election Day.

Human interventions

In that span of time, Alvia said, a lot of "human interventions" could have taken place -- the bribery of canvassing board members, tampering or switching of COCs.

And by then, at the height of the canvassing process, the number of active Namfrel volunteers would have dropped to "25 percent" of their original size during Election Day.

"Only one out of four volunteers would still be reporting. The rest would have returned to their jobs, businesses, schools," Alvia said.

Their ranks have so thinned that there would be no one left to "return to the municipality or city" where the discrepancies occurred and produce the ERs covered by questionable COCs. (An ER is considered the more reliable source document since it was produced "closest" to the polling day, executed by the teachers who oversaw the balloting.)

"Who else can we give instructions to?" Alvia said. Namfrel may have accumulated data possibly indicating massive fraud, yet that data could not be "acted upon" quickly enough for lack of personnel.

Missing element

With Lente around, perhaps this missing element would now be in place -- a recognized, nonpartisan legal team that can immediately file a manifestation or protest based on the information gathered by the other volunteers, Alvia said.

While the watchers have the zeal, the power of faith, and probably the numbers to cover enough ground, they realize they are up against formidable, mostly unseen forces capable of pulling off another "Hello Garci."

With "lessons" learned from the "Garci" scandal, the poll watchers undoubtedly need to retool against increasingly sophisticated modes of cheating, whether these are done at the precincts, at the canvassing boards or, worse, in higher circles only wiretapping experts can penetrate.

After all, it still took political insiders, intelligence operators, and partisan figures -- not whistle-blowers from the ranks of poll watchers -- to pry the Garci scandal wide open in June 2005, more than a year after the May 2004 presidential elections.

Wiretapped conversations purportedly between President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and former Election Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano were made public, indicating she may have stolen the 2004 presidential election. The President and Garcillano have denied any wrongdoing.

1st time: Lawyers as poll watchers

Lente, the new group joining the old watchdogs like Namfrel and the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), believes that adding lawyers, paralegals and law students to the army of poll watchers could significantly deter any schemes to manipulate the election results.

That army includes half a million volunteers called to action by the Catholic Church in the country.

"Whatever they may be planning out there, we will be waiting when they start to implement it on the ground," said Medina. "With our presence, they better come up with other ideas."

Medina, a law professor who is also executive director of the Ateneo Human Rights Center, said the coming elections would mark the first time lawyers would form part of the poll-watching "structure."

In previous elections, lawyers figured in the canvassing mainly as private attorneys for the competing politicians. This time, Medina said, there will be Lente members working simultaneously with Namfrel or PPCRV volunteers, the latter being mostly laypersons not versed in the legal technicalities of a poll canvass.

Lente, which aims to deploy at least 9,600 lawyers, paralegals or law students nationwide, can be most useful in applying the "lessons" poll watchers have learned from the "Garci" episode, he said.

Numerical tricks

Just what are those numerical tricks poll watchers are trained to spot when examining ERs and COCs? Alvia gave actual samples that Namfrel has culled from past elections:

• The figure "lllll-ll" got written as "five two" instead of "seven." This was spotted in Marikina in 1998.

• The numeral "19" got written as "ninety." It happened in Manila in the 2001 polls.

• With just two strokes of a pen, "1,382" in the municipal COC became "4,382" in the provincial COC; Zamboanga del Norte, 2001.

• "2,599" grew almost five-fold and became "12,599," while "13,784" morphed into "28,784." This was documented in two towns in Pangasinan in 1995. Twenty-two other towns in that province produced a total of 112,994 "extra" votes.

• And in the 2004 elections, this was encountered in Tawi-Tawi: With already 89 percent of the votes canvassed in the Namfrel Quick Count, Presidential Candidate A had garnered only 15,925 votes against Candidate B's 58,292 votes. B was thus enjoying an insurmountable lead of 42,367 votes.

But after the remaining 11 percent or 9,553 votes were canvassed, the official tally showed B getting a total of over 49,803 votes over A's 33,634 votes. B still won in the province, yes, but by a much narrower margin.

This was because about 31,000 votes cast for B went instead to A, Alvia said. Similar occurrences were also observed in seven other provinces in Mindanao, wherein a total of 598,560 "B" votes got moved to the "A" column.

Known forms of cheating

There are forms of cheating which poll watchers can easily detect, he said, such as vote-buying, the use of "flying voters," ballot-box switching, and various tactics to sow confusion, delay the process, or discourage people from trooping to the poll booths.

But beyond the precincts, there would be hazy areas way outside their radar. Alvia wondered: What if candidates themselves connive to engage in dagdag-bawas? A winning senatorial candidate with a safe lead willing to donate some of his votes to a party mate so the latter can make it to the Magic 12?

"Of course, we cannot -- and will not -- monitor phone calls. That's not part of our mandate," said former Ambassador Henrietta de Villa, PPCRV national chair.

As the accredited citizen arm of the Comelec, the Church-based group aims to deploy half-a-million volunteers or at least two per precinct nationwide. Established in 1992, it will be monitoring its 16th elections this May 14.

"But we can't be frustrated. What we are doing is living a part of our (Catholic) faith. Our mere presence is about restoring credibility to our elections, otherwise more and more will just shy away from them," De Villa said.

( www.inquirer.net )

Machinery for Cheating in ARMM Being Laid Out - Dalidig

Hadji Abdullah Dalidig, the Namfrel officer in Lanao del Sur who testified before the Senate in 2005 about the manipulation of election results in his province during the May 2004 elections said that the very same machinery and practices are being put into place in preparation for the May 2007 elections.

BY DABET CASTAÑEDA
Bulatlat
In the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), flying voters are paid P200 each ($4.21 at an exchange rate of $1=P47.46) to register in as many precincts as possible, Hadji Abdullah Dalidig said in an interview with Bulatlat.

Dalidig is the controversial Namfrel (National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections) officer in Lanao del Sur who testified before the Senate in 2005 about the manipulation of election results in his province during the May 2004 presidential elections. In his testimony before the Senate, Dalidig said the May 2004 presidential elections was the “dirtiest” of all five elections he has monitored in Lanao del Sur.

Daligdig said that these newly-recruited flying voters would augment the flying voters who registered for the May 2004 elections but “have not been deleted” from the official list of registered voters. Records from the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) shows there are 100,000 more registered voters for the 2007 elections than in 2004 in Lanao del Sur.

Hadji Abdullah Dalidig, ex-Namfrel official and Lanao del Sur poll fraud whistleblower


“I doubt that the May 2007 elections will be credible,” the Namfrel officer said. Dalidig will again serve as Namfrel officer in Lanao del Sur for the coming elections. The COMELEC approved the petition of Namfrel to conduct a quick count of the results of the May 2007 elections.

Lanao del Sur is one of the five provinces of the ARMM together with Basilan, Maguindanao, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.

As of April 28, 2004, the number of registered voters in ARMM is 1,057,458. Lanao del Sur registered the second highest number of registered voters (275,572) from among the five ARMM provinces.

Vote buying

Vote buying is also rampant in ARMM, Dalidig said.

In fact, he said a powerful political clan in ARMM, which is aligned with the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration has allegedly sworn to give each mayor a cash incentive of P1 million ($21,070) each if Team Unity, the administration’s senatorial slate, wins 12-0 in their respective municipalities.

Another source, whose name is withheld for security reasons, said the same powerful clan is allegedly Macapagal-Arroyo’s “cheating operator in ARMM.” The clan has allegedly received P60 million ($1,264,222) from three wealthy senatorial bets of the administration to ensure their win in the region. The said clan has also allegedly received P200 million ($4,214,075) from the administration to ensure a 12-0 win for Team Unity, the source said.

To ensure the “grand plan” for cheating in the May 2007 elections in ARMM, the source said, a member of the clan will be appointed as the seventh COMELEC commissioner just before the May 2007 elections. The new appointee will replace Virgilio Garcillano or “Garci,” the COMELEC official caught on tape talking with Macapagal –Arroyo in the infamous “Hello, Garci” scandal. In the said tape, the president was allegedly overheard asking Garcillano to make sure she leads by one million votes over her rival, actor Fernando Poe Jr., in the May 2004 presidential elections. Bulatlat