By PAULINE DYCOCO
THE counting of votes may have been quick, but the country’s first-ever automated elections were far from being successful.
This was the sentiment of outgoing Isabela Gov. Grace Padaca, who lost her reelection bid to Faustino Dy III, a scion of the powerful “Dy Dynasty” in the province.
“Define successful? Just because nabilang agad (the counting was quick)?” Padaca said in a press conference on Tuesday at the Ateneo De Manila University.
“I hope we don’t make the Filipino people’s satisfaction shallow,” she added in Filipino.
Automated cheating?
According to Padaca, despite the Commission on Elections’ statement that the May 2010 polls have been successful, massive vote-buying, black propaganda, intimidations, threats and even terrorism were prevalent in Isabela.
Padaca said that aside from the defects in some precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines, voters were bribed during the recently concluded polls.
The former radio broadcaster said money was given two weeks before the elections to voters who were lined up along the national highways. Some people too, were allegedly sent to resorts and bodegas where they were handed P200 to P300 each.
Padaca was defeated in the neck-and-neck battle where she got 49.46 percent of the votes versus Dy, who received 50 percent.
Failed automated polls
Harvey Keh, director of the Ateneo School of Government and founder of political movement Kaya Natin, echoed Padaca’s sentiment.
“We don’t believe in the total success of the elections. We want Comelec to answer these allegations,” he said.
Although the number of election-related violence has gone down to 111 from 2007’s 181, Keh saw little improvement in the figures.
The ADMU professor demanded a dialogue with the Comelec and Smartmatic about the issues hounding the automated elections.
Padaca, who is a member of Kaya Natin, plans to invite losing presidential bets Jamby Madrigal, JC Delos Reyes, Nicanor Perlas and Joseph Estrada to join their case. Madrigal, De los Reyes, Perlas and Estrada have alleged that massive poll fraud was committed in the May 10 elections.
(Read Grace Padaca’s statement here.)
