AS Congress convenes for the canvassing of votes today, the House investigation on poll irregularities will proceed as losing candidates continue to present “evidence” of fraud in the country’s first automated elections.

The Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms yesterday said it will invite people who allegedly offered to rig the results in favor a certain candidate for a certain fee.

During the hearing yesterday, former Surigao del Norte Governor Robert Ace Barbers said he was offered P50 million by a poll operator who claimed he can reconfigure compact flash cards to contain preprogrammed results in favor of Barbers. He also said the transmission from the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) can be disrupted and overridden by another machine.

According to Barbers, who lost in his reelection bid, he would have to pay 35 percent of the fee as downpayment. The rest would be given after proclamation. Barbers said the offer included results in favor of his entire slate – from the vice governor down to all his mayors.

“I thought it was not realistic. I have big faith in the automation system, that it’s fraud-proof, that’s why I ignored the offer,” he said. The man said should Barbers turn him down, he will offer his services to the governor’s opponent. When the results came out, much to Barbers’s surprise and dismay, his entire team lost.

Three other losing candidates – Laguna Governor Teresita Lazaro, Quezon City Rep. Matias Defensor, and Sulu Rep. Munir Arbison – said they were likewise approached by operators who can make them win.

During the committee hearing last Friday, La Union (2nd district) Rep. Thomas Dumpit Jr. also said technicians can manipulate results “if the price is right.” Smartmatic’s automation system, he said, made it easier for “wholesale cheating” to happen instead of eliminating poll fraud.

According to Rep. Dumpit, technicians can manipulate results as long as the price is right and that Smartmatic did not eliminate election fraud, but instead made it easier for “wholesale cheating” to happen. In his province, Dumpit alleged that CF cards were switched and that the transmission of results were tampered with.

Iloilo Rep. Raul Gonzales Jr. during last week’s hearing said a “possible connivance between opponents and suspected IT experts connected with Smartmatic” to rig the results may have occurred.

“The PCOS machine is nothing but a glamorized counting machine,” he concluded.

Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez, however, dismissed these allegations as a case of a “me-too syndrome.” He said the barrage of poll fraud allegations and pre-election offers made other losing candidates say “me too.”

The committee’s investigation, chaired by Makati City Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr., was convened after losing representatives and other officials cried foul over allegations of massive cheating during the May 10 polls.

The authors are students of Bicol University doing their summer internship at Vera Files.

GENERAL SANTOS CITY.–An administration mayoralty aspirant in Maasim town in Sarangani province has asked the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to immediately nullify the earlier proclamation of his rival due to alleged erroneous transmission of election returns from one of the polling precincts.

Defeated Maasim mayoralty candidate Arturo Lawa said on Friday that he filed a petition before the Comelec en banc in Manila to rectify alleged errors in the town’s voting results after the Municipal Board of Canvassers (MBOC) also allegedly failed to properly count the votes cast from clustered precinct number 21 of Barangay Kablakan in Maasim.

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SAN JOSE

Elected governor of the province was incumbent congressman Exequiel Javier (Lakas-Kampi). His son Paolo won as congressman.

Paolo defeated the incumbent governor, Salvacion Perez, who had served for three terms and was running for the House of Representatives. During the campaign, Perez had raised the issue of political dynasty and corruption against the Javiers.

Exequiel is the younger brother of the late governor Evelio Javier who was shot to death on Feb. 11, 1986, shortly before Corazon Aquino took power.

The rivalry between the Javiers and Perez go back a long way. Before being elected governor, Perez thrice ran to represent the lone district of Antique but was defeated by Exequiel each time.

Exequiel was elected governor of the province in 1998 after serving as congressman for three terms. He again won a seat in Congress in 2001.

Aside from accusing the Javiers of perpetuating a political dynasty, Perez also accused them of graft and corruption. During the campaign, the following accusations were levelled against the Javiers:

•  The alleged distribution of nonfunctioning mechanical dryers which were supposedly bought with the pork barrel fund of Exequiel Javier.
•  The alleged transfer of a rice mill from the municipality of Patnongon to Hamtic. The rice mill is managed by Grand Coop whose members are allegedly allies of Javier.
•  The funding of unfinished and allegedly nonexistent farm-to-market roads from Javier’s congressional fund.

But the Javiers also have accused Perez of corruption. They pointed to her involvement in the Antique Development Foundation (ADF), a nongovernment organization formed by the Zaldivar family, which took charge of the fertilizer fund. Perez, a member of the Zaldivar family, was chair of the ADF board.

Charging Perez and the foundation’s officers with violating the anti-graft law as well as the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees, Sangguniang Panlalawigan member Tobias Javier said the respondents priced the  fertilizer 10 times its actual price.

Javier said a report by the Commission on Audit showed that the ADF bought 2,000 liters of liquid fertilizer with the brand Florida Green at P1,250 per liter for a total of P2.5 million.

An independent canvass done by COA , however, reportedly revealed the price at just P100 per liter. This means an overprice of P1,150 per liter or a total of P2.3 million.

Perez, however, branded the accusation as politically motivated. She said Sangguniang Panlalawigan member Tobias Javier who had filed the case is a nephew of Exequiel.

(For more information on winning political clans, click here.)

The proposal to apply for a writ of habeas data was made by lawyer Lorna Kapunan who said the proper remedy for seeking the truth in the May 10 elections is by availing themselves of the judicial process.  She recalled that former Chief Justice Reynato Puno had made this option available when military authorities refused to cooperate with Edita Burgos in looking for her missing son, activist Jonas Burgos.

At that time, the option was known as the writ of amparo. In accordance with the principles of that writ, a government agency simply could not simply say, for example, that it does not have the missing person in its custody. The agency will have to use its resources to help look for that person.

In the case of the elections, Kapunan said it would not be enough for the Comelec to just deny the occurrence of fraud. The poll body would have to produce the documents and other materials that would show that there was no fraud.

CenPEG executive director Evita Jimenez said the organization was not as interested in who won in the elections as it is in the process that was followed during the automated polls.

She said a review of the May 10 elections by an independent citizens’ body and by a Joint Congressional Oversight Committee in the new administration would be important in assuring that future elections would be transparent and credible.

She expressed the fear that “the documents will be gone” and that CF cards would be destroyed in the name of “national interest.”

Suspicion of fraud arose following “a significant number of incidents all over the country” as monitored by CenPEG:

• The malfunctioning, shutdown and destruction of PCOS machines, non-functioning compact flash (CF) cards, paper jams and power outages in certain areas
• Failure of transmission from some clustered precincts, forcing Boards of Election Inspectors to resort to manual transmission by taking the CF cards and PCOS machines to the municipal canvassing centers
• Delayed canvassing and random manual audits (RMAs) in many areas with the results of completed RMAs still undisclosed.

CenPEG estimated that as many as 15 percent of voters were disenfranchised because of alleged poor voting management procedures, technical breakdowns, transmission failures, delayed canvassing and RMAs that became vulnerable to tampering.

The organization also pointed out that even before the elections, the automated election system had already been stripped of the safeguards that were mandated by the election law and by minimum industry standards.

CenPEG had urged the Comelec to review the source code to make sure that the voters’ verifiability feature was functioning, to post the digitally signed precinct election returns (ER), and to ensure that the private keys would be generated solely by the BEIs. These, however, were ignored by the Comelec, said CenPEG.

Pablo Manalastas, senior fellow of CenPEG, said by posting the digitally signed precinct ERs, voters would have been assured that the returns have not been changed.

Bobby Tuazon, CenPEG director for advocacy and policy studies, said by transferring the secret keys from the BEIs to Smartmatic, the Comelec had already committed a violation. Such an act, he said, could lead to interval rigging.

Lito Averia, information technology consultant for CenPEG, said the transfer of the keys from the teachers who constituted the BEI was itself “a big security issue.”

Temario Rivera, a political scientist and vice chair of CenPEG, said that if any cheating had been done, this could have been through the CF cards. At the same time, he said the fraud could have only been perpetrated by persons with the resources to do this, namely the administration.

When asked why the turnout for national positions, particularly the presidency, had favored the opposition despite the alleged occurrence of fraud, Rivera said an interesting theory would be that the cheating was aimed at the lower positions, namely the House of Represenatives and other local positions.

The press conference was also attended by some candidates who were faring badly in the poll count. Former senator Francisco Tatad said he plans to seek the nullification of the entire election results and to sue the Comelec commissioners.

But another participant in the press con said Homobono Adaza had already beaten Tatad to that. Adaza yesterday has reportedly filed a case in the Ombudsman against the Comelec commissioners. On Friday, he would be petitioning for the annulment of election results.

SHARIFF AGUAK , Maguindanao.– If Ismael “Dustin” Veloso Mastura, 39, had a choice, he would be happy running for vice mayor of Sultan Kudarat town. But fate would lead him to run for and win against the 68-year old warlord, Datu Andal Ampatuan, Sr.

His uncle Tucao, who would have been proclaimed governor of Shariff Kabunsuan province in the 2007 elections but for a temporary restraining order from the Supreme Court and the latter’s declaring its creation unconstitutional, had filed his candidacy for mayor of Sultan Kudarat town when Esmael “Toto” Mangudadatu, who was running for Governor, sought the Masturas for a running mate.

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WITH the elections over, poll groups are now bracing themselves for a slew of  poll-related complaints to be filed before the courts.

The Legal Network for Truthful Elections (Lente) and the Citizens’ Coalition for ARMM Electoral Reforms (CCARE) are calling on witnesses to come forward and file anonymous complaints before the Commission on Elections (Comelec), a quasi-judicial body.

“We will run after the cheats, and we need (the public’s) help,” Rona Caritos of Lente said during a press conference held in Quezon City last Friday.

Lente and CCARE will for the first time test legal provisions for election-related anonymous complaints to be filed before Comelec or the appropriate court. Doing so will protect complainants from harassment and retribution, they said.

According to CCARE Chairperson Ibrahim Salic, witnesses from ARMM might not come forward for fear of their safety.

Filing such cases can be harmful to perpetrators. Poll violations include vote buying and selling; threat, intimidation, and use of fraudulent devices; coercion of election officials and employees; and possession of firearms.

Cases can also be filed against the appointment of ineligible members of the board of election inspectors (BEIs); the transfer of officers and employees in the civil service; and the use of public funds for an election campaign.

In Lanao del Sur, for instance, several BEIs received threats and as a result did not go to the precincts. In Tugaya, two civilians and a soldier were killed.

Moreover, Comelec had to declare failure of elections in at least nine of 37 towns because of Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines that failed and ballots that were not delivered.

The delay of transmission of votes to the municipal and provincial canvassing centers also exposed poll officers and the automation system to “external risks,” CCARE said. Some of the Smartmatic technicians were also reportedly under the employ of certain candidates.

Some towns in Maguindanao and Sultan Kudarat also yielded a voter turnout of 99.9 percent, a highly unlikely figure given that in most precincts, there were no more voters by 2 p.m.

BEIs were also seen collecting ballots and feeding them into the machine and no secrecy folders were available.

Meanwhile, vote buying was observed to be “more visible” especially in Lanao Del Sur, Sulu, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi.

“Automation is not the solution, vote buying and other election-related concerns remain,” said Ibrahim.

Int’l group’s findings

Foreign members of the International Observers Mission (IOM), a group of poll experts from five countries, agreed that numerous election rules, procedures and protocols have not been observed and enforced. These happened not only in areas like Maguindanao, but also in Negros Occidental, Pampanga, and Pasig City.

The delegation, whose five-day visit was organized by the Compact for Peaceful and Democratic Elections, added multiple voting could have been possible in some precincts because the indelible ink had not been properly used.

The use of violence greatly marred the elections especially in hotly contested areas, where military troops and police had to be deployed, the group observed. Donald Goertzon of USA Goertzon shared that in Datu Unsay, for instance, the polling area had to be closed after armed men opened fire to threaten the voters.

“Such incidents could have contributed to election fraud and significant disenfranchisement, undermining the people’s right to vote,” said Tone Tingscard of Sweden at a recently held press conference in Quezon City.

But despite these, the observers said at least “actual voting took place” in areas where the military protected the voters from private armies. In 2007, no elections took place in Maguindanao because private armed groups prevented voters from casting their votes.

“There is always room for improvement. The government should take seriously these reports to improve the next elections,” said Sim Chee Keong of Malaysia.

Despite the irregularities, IOM commended the country for using a new election process.

As part of its recommendations, the IOM said the new government should focus on a voter’s right to suffrage by ensuring a voter’s privacy; polling center efficiency, which should include increasing the number of polling stations; adding PCOS machine security measures; conducting a full parallel manual count; establishing contingency plans; training of Comelec technical teams; and voter education, among others.

The authors are students of Bicol University doing their summer internship at Vera Files.

COTABATO CITY.— Despite the peaceful elections reported in most places in the country, voting in certain parts of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao was marked by irregularities.

According to the Citizens Coalition for ARMM Electoral Reforms Inc. (Citizens CARE), an organization mandated by the Commission on Elections to monitor the various polling precincts in the region, the following incidents have been observed in the May 10 elections:

• brawls and the destruction of PCOS machines in the towns of Barira, Maguindanao and Indanan of Sulu;
• vote buying and selling;
• failure to post the Computerized Voters’ List on election day;
• use of children to distribute campaign materials on voting day;
• failure to apply indelible ink on the forefingers of voters; and
• disenfranchisement of voters through the unauthorized use of their names and the presence of “flying voters.”

In some polling places, CCARE also observed that PCOS machines were not sealed, particularly the memory card port. While voting was going on, there was general disorder inside the precincts.

Secrecy of voting was widely violated, with the absence of secrecy folders and with members of the Board of Election Inspectors filling up and casting multiple ballots. Most voters reportedly sat very near each other and would compare their ballots.

Some ballots were rejected by the machines because of ambiguous markings.

As a result of its observations, the organization recommended the prosecution of all those found violating election laws. For future elections, CCARE said there should be a dialogue with various stakeholders how to prevent vote buying and multiple registration and voting in future elections; conduct more trainings for BEI members, technicians and other election personnel to guarantee protection of the right to vote, including the secrecy of the ballot; and intensify voter education on poll automation, especially in the far-flung communities of the ARMM.

As an accredited poll monitoring organization, CCARE will be submitting its full report to the Comelec not later than 30 days after the elections. The report will include its analysis of the implementation of automated election procedures in the elections held at the ARMM.

To carry out its poll-watching activities,the group deployed at least 6,000 volunteers in 2,552 barangays in 118 municipalities in the ARMM, including the cities of Marawi, Cotabato, Lamitan and Isabela.

ILOILO CITY.— Less than two percent of votes remain uncanvassed in this city but election results have given commanding leads to Mayor Jerry Trenas who is running for congressman and Vice Mayor Jed Mabilog who is running for mayor. Both are running against former justice secretary Raul Gonzalez who is seeking the mayoralty and his son Raul Jr. who is seeking a congressional seat.

City Election Supervisor Robert Salazar, however, said the compact flash cards were erroneous and needed to be transferred to Manila and corrected.

He also reassured voters that the canvassed results which make up more than 98 percent of the clustered precincts will be printed and signed by election officials to make sure that these are not tampered with.

Supporters of Trenas and Mabilog, however, expressed fears that the powerful former justice secretary might try to influence the results of the voting.

“The defective CF cards will have to be corrected to reflect the actual votes garnered by the candidates,” said Salazar.

Hundreds of political supporters of Trenas and Mabilog blocked the doors of a canvassing center in this city Tuesday night to protect election results. Even media people were prevented from going out.

Earlier, Mabilog said that they will not allow election paraphernalia to be taken out of the canvassing center. By 2 a.m., however, after a standoff of more than eight hours, Trenas called on their supporters to go home, saying their lawyers will protect their votes.

With 98 percent of the votes canvassed, Trenas got 97,711 votes while the younger Gonzalez received 73,806 for the congressional position. For the mayoral race, Mabilog got 77,627 votes while the older Gonzalez received 62,938.

Earlier, Gonzalez’s camp had asked why 227 out of 344 PCOS machines in the city were not able to transmit the results on election day.

Lawyer Eugenio Original, who represented the Gonzalezes, said that “the CF cards were questionable because these were brought by the members of the Board of Election Inspectors and submitted to the canvassing board without watchers accompanying them.”

Lawyers for Trenas and Mabilog, on the other hand, claimed that Original was only trying to delay the proclamation of their bets.

DESPITE a 75 percent turnout of voters and  80 percent of results known within 48 hours, the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG)  and Halalang Marangal cautioned the public against claims of “success’ by the Commission on Elections.

CenPEG’s director for policy studies, Bobby Tuazon, said the  Comelec  should  address  the following concerns:

First, election results were being publicized right after polls closed last May 10 but reports from the provinces, including those filed by CenPEG’s field researchers, showed a significant number of transmission failures or delays in many provinces such as in the Cordillera, Abra, Ilocos region, Masbate, Samar, and parts of Mindanao this morning. There is no basis for publicizing national election results when votes from the provinces remained un-transmitted and incomplete, Tuazon said.

Second, the claim of automation success should be based also on the turnout of voters and the number of electorate who were able to vote. Definitely Comelec’s pre-election forecast of 85 percent turnout is now overridden by reports indicating a turnout of about 70 percent with the number of actual voters significantly lower, Tuazon said. CenPEG’s initial reports show that a big number of voters were disenfranchised for varied reasons, he added. “Automation was supposed to make voting easier and to accommodate all voters but the election day scenarios proved otherwise,” he said.

Third, why were UV scanners not used in many clustered precincts all over the country on May 10 when these were supposed to be part of Comelec’s continuity plan to check the authenticity of ballots? Why has Comelec not revealed up to now whether it was able to conduct final testing and sealing (FTS) activities prior to the voting on account of its failed May 3 FTS operations?

Fourth, the accuracy and integrity of the election results need to be established convincingly by Comelec. Considering that the poll automation overlooked many legal procedures, requirements, and safeguards including the source code review, voter’s verification feature, the generation of secret keys solely by the BEIs, and other lapses are compelling grounds for the poll body to establish public confidence in the May 10 results. “A process that is inherently flawed, is infirmed, and compromised cannot make the election results accurate let alone credible,” Tuazon said.

Halalang Marangal , on the other hand, said, “People want a successful election so badly, that it is easy to get carried away by flood of incoming election returns. Many want to believe that a clean and speedy election has finally happened, at last. But let not the public euphoria at the speed of counting erase the persistent concerns about the process.”

Halalang Marangal said the Comelec and local election authorities should not be in a hurry to declare the elections a success and to proclaim winners, especially in close contests.

A civil society group that had warned of failure of election  with the implementation of an untested nationwide automated elections said they they were  glad to have been proven wrong.

The Concerned Citizens Movement, the group that went to the Supreme Court to stop  full automation of the May 10, 2010 elections , said, “But fair is fair. The elections, despite our worse apprehensions, did not fail. Credit should be given to both the COMELEC and Smartmatic-TIM for this triumph of democracy. “

The group further said, “As we have repeatedly stated, we would be more than happy if history were to prove us wrong. And by God: we’re absolutely thrilled.”

CCM, however, said even if the worse did not happen what they warned about the problem of clustering of precincts and breakdown of some of the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines  happened.

“For while we as a nation were elated that results were known even “before we could say Garci “, the reality is that the President Elect himself, Noynoy Aquino, experienced first hand what the Concerned Citizens Movement warned against. First, there were the incredible delays in voting due to our single most major reclustering of precincts. Then there were PCOS machines that did not work and replacements that took hours to arrive. Until now, there are five million votes that still have to be canvassed due to transmission problems.  The glitches in fact were so prevalent that by midday,of Election Day, the nation was rightfully alarmed about the possibility of failure of elections,” CCM said.

CCM further said, “In hindsight, failure was averted because of the timely intervention of our public school teachers and the media. In precincts where the PCOS machines did not work and a replacement was not immediately forthcoming, the teachers proceeded with the voting sans the machines anticipating that a replacement would arrive by end of the polling day. Media, on the other hand, played the role of a supportive cheerleader exhorting the electorate to be patient as at stake is the future of democracy in the country. It helped too that Noynoy Aquino’s win was by a landslide since his closest opponent could no longer complaint about possible cheating. Ultimately, it is perhaps the dire prospect of GMA forever, should the elections fail, that prompted the electorate to withstand the torturous conditions of voting that took an average of two and a half hours when in the past, it took only twenty minutes.”