By VIOLETA M. GLORA
Mindanews
ILIGAN CITY.—Reports of fraud and violence marked the special elections held in Lanao del Sur Thursday as vote-buying proliferated, with the price pegged at anywhere from P10,000 to 15,000 per family.
This was the report made by the Citizens Coalition for ARMM Electoral Reform (Citizens CARE), an election watchdog in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, which monitored the conduct of special election in the Lanao areas.
Citizens CARE also said the indiscriminate firing of guns left a nine-year-old girl in critical condition.
Special elections were conducted in 190 clustered precincts in seven towns in Lanao del Sur based on Comelec Resolution 8965.
The resolution covered the towns of Sultan Dumalundong, Lumba Bayabao, Masiu, Tubaran, Lumbaca Unayan, Marogong and Bayang which had a total of 71,578 voters.
The elections in these towns remained hotly contested because the results will determine who will win the congressional seat in the province’s second district, as well as local officials.
A nine-year-old girl watching from her window got hit by a stray bullet in her left shoulder, as witnesses reported people firing guns.
“Although police and military manned the precincts, still the tension was high with indiscriminate firing in some towns that threaten voters,” said Salic Ibrahim, executive director of Maradeca Inc. and head of Citizen CARE.
Based on Citizens Care’s documentation, the shooting was done by support groups of politicians in Sultan Domalondong and in Masiu towns.
Citizens CARE coordinated with Legal Network for Truthful Election (Lente) in monitoring election-related violence and documented cases relating to election fraud and irregularities. Citizens Care had about 241 volunteers helping monitor the special election.
“It was still different if trained Board of Election Inspectors (BEI) managed the election because the military and policemen lacked expertise in handling the election process, like there were those who did not put indelible ink to those who have voted,” Ibrahim said.
He also said watchdogs experienced marginalization in precinct centers as volunteers were not immediately recognized by soldiers assigned, “although the problem was remedied by dialogues.”
Ibrahim also revealed that vote buying was rampant with offers going up to P15,000 per family the night before the scheduled poll.
He also reported that supporters of national officials, contesting for elective posts still, gave P100 or P50 per voter.
“We also observed those who are actively doing smear campaign against presidential candidate Mar Roxas because of his position against Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD),” he said.
Jhoe Musor, communication officer of Maradeca Inc., described the special election as “still considered generally peaceful despite some election cases haunting its conduct.”
“In Marogong town, Comelec officials with police and military decided that only two watchers were allowed to enter inside the polling place,” she said.
“We have noted that a few voters collapsed due to hunger and due to searing heat of the sun while supporters of mayoral candidates figured in fistfights in Lumba Bayabao. They were exchanging foul words and death threats,” Musor described.
“Soldiers denied youths of minor age to vote,” Musor said. “But compared to the recent May 10 poll, the crowd was controlled.”
Ibrahim believed that the Comelec, civil society and the academe need to do more to educate both voters and candidates to avoid recurring electoral violence and fraud in the province.
“Electoral reform is not only the business civil society and Comelec but of politicians too. Thus, those who are seeking elective posts must undertake seminars on electoral reform so that we can achieved desired change,” he added.
Lanao del Sur has yet to experience a national election that was successfully conducted. It was one of the provinces that has served as backdrop for alleged electoral conspiracies such as the “Hello, Garci” controversy.
Samira Ali Gutoc-Tomawis, a Maranao corporate leader and social activist, said: “Lanao del Sur has a notorious propensity in hosting hotspots that tend to make elections a failure. Losing candidates would strategize on ways to disrupt the possible entry and gains of the rival in the precincts by gunfires in the air thereby scuttling away the voters. Vote-buying has become the rule, not the exception; election operators are taking its role.”
Tomawis said “flying voters who are nonresidents of the town have become the key to propelling victory for local candidates” as the political climate of the province doesn’t allow “political debates, just political transactions.”
“Special elections are the exemplars of a bastardly practice of democracy,” she said.
Tomawis, a staunch supporter of vice presidential candidate Loren Legarda, also said “Comelec Commissioner Elias Yusoph discouraged losing Maranao candidates from filing protests, and rather accept defeat and invest in good work in the next three years so that one can earn the people’s overwhelming favor as against a peso for a vote.”
She explained that violent and fraudulent elections in the province are rooted in poverty, the lack of governance, absence of basic social services, lack of agricultural support and dearth of sanitation structures.
“Election here is business. Vote if you bid at the right rate. The ballot is bought by the best bidder,” she wrote. ”It is sad. It is appalling. It would take a generation to cleanse the soul of this local mafia-driven democracy.”
Other areas that held special elections were barangay Buenos Aires, Pagsanghan, Western Samar; three clustered precincts in Glan, Sarangani; four in barangay Lower Mahayahay all in Maluso, Basilan; and 20 in eight barangays in Al Barka, Basilan.