Successful polls in Phl cited by world freedom group

WASHINGTON – A successful election in the Philippines in May was one of a few “bright spots” in the annual survey of political rights and civil liberties around the world, said Freedom House, a Washington-based non-government organization.

The Freedom in the World 2011 report described the Philippine election as one of the few noteworthy gains in a year in which global freedom suffered its fifth consecutive year of decline.

The number of countries with declines in aggregate score in the Asia-Pacific region outnumbered those with gains by a ratio of 2 to 1, the report said.

“The most positive development was a major improvement in the Philippines due to elections that were deemed relatively free and fair and that were conducted in notably less violent circumstances than in the recent past. The Philippines had its designation as an electoral democracy restored as a result,” it added.

A computerized vote-counting system used for the first time in the polls was credited for the quick results that led to the election as president of Benigno Aquino III.

The Freedom House report showed that the Philippines scored three points in political rights and three points in civil liberties. One point represents the best score and seven points the worst score.

“The Philippines’ political rights rating improved from 4 to 3 due to comparatively peaceful and credible presidential and legislative elections held in May 2010,” the report said.

Published annually since 1972, Freedom in the World examines the ability of individuals to exercise their political and civil rights in 194 countries and 14 territories around the world.

The latest edition analyzes developments that occurred in 2010 and assigns each country a freedom status – free, partly free, or not free – based on a scoring of performance on key democracy indicators.

Of 194 countries examined in the latest report, the number designated as free fell from 89 to 87.

Sixty countries including the Philippines were rated as partly free, up from 58 the previous year, and the number of countries deemed to be not free remained at 47.

Of the 47 countries ranked not free, nine countries and one territory received the survey’s lowest possible rating for both political rights and civil liberties: Burma, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Tibet, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

“This should be a wake-up call for all of the world’s democracies,” said David J. Kramer, executive director of Freedom House. “Our adversaries are not just engaging in widespread repression, they are doing so with unprecedented aggressiveness and self-confidence, and the democratic community is not rising to the challenge.”

The Philippines was rated a free democracy from 2002 to 2005 and had a political score of two and a civil liberty score of three.

It was downgraded to a partly free democracy in 2006 because of credible allegations of massive electoral fraud, corruption, and government intimidation of political opposition.

A partly free country has limited respect for political rights and civil liberties.

Another noteworthy gain mentioned in the report was Indonesia’s embrace of democracy and civil rights in Muslim-majority countries. –JOSE KATIGBAK STAR Washington Bureau (The Philippine Star)