Foreigners stunned by poll fraud

The May l0 elections were neither honest nor peaceful but the Filipino people should be praised for their determination to exercise their voting rights and keep democracy alive, according to a foreign team that for two weeks observed the country’s first automated polls.

The 86-member International Observers Mission said its members witnessed widespread intimidation, vote-buying, corruption and violence, which showed that automation could solve only part of the problem.

“The elections were not peaceful or violence-free. Neither were the elections fair nor honest,” the mission said in its report which it presented on Tuesday to Senator Francis Escudero, co-chairman of the joint congressional oversight committee on election automation.

The group however refrained from making any conclusion on whether the just-concluded polls were successful or not.

“I don’t think that it is for us to give a passing or failing grade. It is for the Filipino people to give that grade,” said the group’s spokesman Carolyn Ann Crabtree of Canada.

The group said however that they were not in a position to assess the dependability and accuracy of the precinct count optical scan machines used in the elections because they did not have the expertise.

“We can’t speak of the technology behind the PCOS machines because we do not have any idea or expertise to examine the PCOS machines and their source coding. So we can’t really speak of the accuracy of the counting of the ballots. We didn’t observe the actual counting of the ballots,” Crabtree told newsmen.

The mission said its team members saw a lot of instances of vote-buying and presence of armed men of candidates and political warlords, which intimidated voters and created an atmosphere of fear.

Team members reported that they observed people lining up in politicians’ houses; political supporters distributing campaign materials with money clipped to it; people paid not to vote; young boys paid to vote. In Surigao, they said one voter told them that there was not one politician who did not offer him money.

The group said it monitored incidents of election-related violence such as gunfights, ambuscades. In Tugaya, Lanao del Sur, it said members of the IOM were caught in the crossfire between armed men belonging to rival politicians.

It also deplored the “sore lack of preparations” for the elections as evidenced by the following: too few PCOS machines with many instances of breakdown, paper jam and overheating; lack of teachers and machine technicians; lack of supplies, and lack of system for facilitating the voting process for the elderly and disabled. In Davao, the group noted that 24 out of 64 PCOS machines failed to transmit election returns.

The foreign observers however commended the Filipino people for their enthusiasm in exercising their right of suffrage and in voting for the candidates of their choice.

“We as a group are amazed at the resiliency and spirit of the Filipino people. If it was not for the public school teachers who were willing to work until 2 or 3 in the morning, the Filipino people who stood under scorching heat for five, six to l2 hours to be able to actually cast their vote, then the elections would not have happened. We are in awe of the spirit of the people and we have a lot to learn from them,” Crabtree said. –Fel Maragay, Manila Standard Today