Governance problems

ANALYSIS

Editor’s note: The Manila Times today publishes the fourth part of the serialization of Mr. Monsod’s assessment of the May 2010 automated polls. The assessment was delivered on November 9, 2010, at the Ateneo de Manila Rockwell campus in Rockwell, Makati City, as a lecture, under the Jaime V. Ongpin Foundation Lecture Series.

Fourth of six parts

Twenty-four years after democracy was restored in our country, we should be harder on ourselves in determining if our elections are more mature and democratic, with democratic elections defined as “an equal opportunity for every qualified voter to cast a ballot and have that ballot counted.” (This was the main criterion used by the US Congress in passing the Help America Vote Act of 2002, or HAVA, in the wake of the trauma of the 2000 Gore vs. Bush elections).
There were two types of governance problems in the 2010 elections.

The first were the perennial problems—the late promulgation of rules, regulations and guidelines; disenfranchisement from defective voters’ lists; delays in delivery or non-deliveries of election paraphernalia; inadequate training of teachers and Comelec (Commission on Elections) field personnel; inadequate voter education; and irregularities in procedures.

Most of these involved procedures. But since elections are a process, procedures partake the substance of suffrage.
These governance problems can all be solved with better management. But the point is that they were more pronounced in 2010.
The lack of enough attention to the details of operations may also be due to the preoccupation of the Comelec with automation.

The second were the special concerns, namely, (a) warlords, private armies, goons with legal arms; (b) disenfranchisement and the low registration rate of overseas workers; (c) the flawed implementation of a flawed party-list system; and, of course, (d) corruption. These concerns required longer-term thinking, full staff work and relentless advocacy, which the present Comelec does not appear disposed to do. With the added complication of the many, and largely unanticipated problems of automation, these special concerns were left unattended and may remain so, until there is a major changing of the guard at the Comelec.
I would like to share my thoughts on how to address these concerns.

Warlords, private armies, goons with legal arms, “command votes.” It is true that the incidence of violence (ERVI meaning “election-related violent incident”) in 2010 was relatively low compared to earlier elections, but the casualty figure of 55 deaths is a bit misleading because the 57 deaths in the Maguindanao massacre were not included on the ground that the massacre took place before the election period. But since the group was on the way for the filing of a certificate of candidacy, does anyone doubt that it was election-related?

“Command votes,” while mainly a function of warlordism, is also about the use by the powerful in elections of money, a lot of it sourced from the government, which, in the context of the poverty and feudalistic conditions in our country, is another form of voter coercion.

The fact is that every opposition denounces warlordism and command votes, until it is its turn in power. The vicious cycle must be broken and, according to the military, the solution is simple—don’t issue licenses and permits to the goons of politicians and don’t legitimize them as government paramilitary forces. It’s the politicians, including those in Malacañang, who request these issuances and designations. And the task of the military is made more difficult when the secretary of Defense is a former military man. A key recommendation of both the Davide and Feliciano commissions on de-politicalizing the military is to appoint a civilian as secretary of Defense. The Aquino administration did not follow that recommendation.

In that light, we might ask this administration if it is prepared to finally break the vicious cycle of warlordism, private armies and command votes.

Disenfranchisement and oversees absentee voting. We cannot call our elections truly democratic until all those who are qualified are first registered. The first source of disenfranchisement is a defective voters’ list. The Comelec solution of incremental registration with biometric registration is correct. Another general registration would be expensive and unproductive. (The US HAVA mentioned earlier went farther than a computerized voters’ list. A voter who cannot find his name is not turned away which summarily forecloses his right. Instead, he is allowed to cast a provisional ballot, which can be counted after his eligibility is verified.)

The second source of disenfranchisement in 2010, estimated at 2 to 3 million during the House Committee on Suffrage hearings, was automation related and involved the voters who were refused a second ballot or did not vote because of congestion at the polling place. (Under the HAVA, a voter has the right to correct his/her ballot for mistakes or an overvote/undervote, and the notice to him is a mandatory feature of a voting machine.)

The third source of disenfranchisement, and the most serious one, is the low registration rate of overseas workers (defined as “persons whose stay overseas is related to job contracts”), numbering about 3.6 million. I do not include the citizens of convenience who have deeper roots in their adopted countries. The number registered in 2010 for Filipinos overseas is 589,830 of which only 153, 323 voted. This means that out of at least 3.6 million of qualified voters, the turnout rate is at most 4.2 percent.
This is unacceptable because the problem is solvable. The first step is to require in the passport law that a certificate of voter registration be submitted for the issuance of a passport. In five years, all OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) would be registered. The second step is to allow all of them to vote by mail (only about 114,00 were given that right in 2010), which is what other countries do. The arguments about secrecy and vote-buying are not valid. The likelihood is that these voters will cast an intelligent vote and will not sell it.

The disenfranchisement arising from these three causes is about 5 to 6 million voters, which is totally unacceptable.

To be continued –Christian S. Monsod, Former Chairman, Commission On Elections, Manila Times