BE 2010 Preliminary Report – May 11, 2010 Press Conference

“The AUTOMATED ELECTION was FAIR, FREE and SUCCESSFUL” – this was what the Bantay Eleksyon 2010 told the media and a group of foreign observers from the European Union at their Press Conference held at Legend Seafood Restaurant at PICC Complex, the day after the May 2010 Elections.

The press conference mainly focuses on observations on election process; from voter’s registration, party list groups/registration, Final Testing and Sealing process, campaigning of Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates, and on the Election Day.

The BE 2010 stated some important issues based on the observations they’ve found on their monitoring efforts:

- according to BE 2010, the voters registration was an uneventful save for a single violent incident in Mindanao, attention should be focused on reported double registration of voters in different provinces. Also, the extension window for voters registration was a dismal turn-out because an estimated 258,000 people only registered during this period while this figure was only a small part of those unregistered citizens. This is in contrary to what the COMELEC have been expecting.

- a certain turn events benefited the Liberal Party when the Supreme Court nullified the NP-NPC merger, giving them the dominance and ease of access of ER’s.

- there was a certain flaw on the party list registration: when there was 187 party list/groups on the ballot while there where only 152 Party list/groups accredited by the COMELEC which gives the extra ordinary length to the Ballot.

- a certain event that was noticed nationwide, when many of the CF cards that was used in the PCOS machine won't function properly which causes major recall of all the CF cards to be replaced with corrected ones. Unfortunately, many CF cards weren't able to make it on the last day of Testing and Sealing, and some even didn’t make it on the Election Day.

- a noticeable makeshift in standings from the start of the campaigning period until the day before the elections: early in the campaigning period, there was a close match between presidential/senators Manny Villar and Noynoy Aquino. As time passes by, forerunner Aquino steadily pulled away from the close fight between villar and also from the other aspirants, while Villar slowly is having decreasing ratings until he was tied with former President Estrada who was steadily increasing his ratings, and Pulse Asia also said that Estrada was already ahead of Villar. Media campaigning was of good use and results for Aquino, as he uses free media exposure through the news.

Vice presidential Roxas and Binay was having a close fight and was even tied at ratings. Binay overtakes Loren who had been third.

Mudslinging in print and television and character assassination among candidates was still a common act during the election period.

Villar was the biggest spender amongst candidates with total expenditures of 279 million of published ads. Aquino followed with 176 million, and then the rest was far behind.

- most problems encountered by the BE 2010 Election Day monitors were long queue, very slow voting process and PCOS malfunctions which tested the patience of the voters.

Significant number of voters that were disenfranchised, most of them where the ones who cannot find their names on the list or they couldn’t find their precincts. Most of this disenfranchisement took place at Quezon City, Agusan del Sur, Bukidnon, and Laguna.

In San Antonio National High School in Makati City, almost 50% of the voters were excluded because most of them have been deactivated.

- many violations on the COMELEC Resolution no. 8786(General Instructions to the (BEIs) occurred. The following violations were:

Sec. 32: Accessibility of polling place to PWDs and disabled voters – although priority treatment were given to senior citizens, accessibility of their precincts were rough as their precinct were not located on the first floor.

Sec. 36-A: Use of the Ballot Secrecy Folder – many E-Day monitors have observed that many voters haven’t used ballot secrecy folders. One certain example of this violation and also caught the attention of the people when a video on facebook was been uploaded where in the video, the former pres. Estrada was voting without using the secrecy folder. The video also shows that the former pres. has abstained voting for the Vice President. This was a clear violation of the section under resolution.

Sec 36-C: Use of Indelible Ink – Two ways of violations: first was that the indelible ink that was applied on some voters could be easily removed; second was that the indelible ink was applied before the voter has cast his/her vote.

Sec 38: Procedures on Rejections of Ballots – Some of the BEI do not know the procedures on Ballot Rejection; the voters leave the precinct without correcting their ballots for it to be accepted by the machine.

Sec 41: Disposal of ERs – Instead of \posting ERs in a conspicuous area, some precincts in Visayas region do not post the ERs, but instead they only read it aloud.

Another violation was the use of the UV lamp. Some of precincts didn’t have UV lamps and in some areas, BEIs complained that they were not instructed or trained to use the UV lamp.

Broadcasted on news nationwide, a total of 365 PCOS machines malfunctioned around the country.

Anomalies and Fraud during the E-Day were reported like vote-buying in areas such as Puerto Prinsesa, Bohol, Surigao del Norte and Sur, etc. It was reported that vote buyers applied indelible inks on the voters, so that the voters couldn’t vote anymore or in other terms, vote denial. In some cases, vote denial via violence was used to prevent voters from coming inside the voting area. In some parts of the country, there were reported cases that some ballots were pre–shaded on the mayoralty race before it was given to the voter.

With the new Automated System, cheating will be difficult unless there are cohorts with COMELEC and Smartmatic. Violence has been the viable option for cheaters in order for them to get votes or deduct votes from their opponents. There were certain cases of violence reported in ARMM; it was either a case of sabotage by shooting the PCOS or kicking the machine. Another case documented was in Lanao del Norte where an incident of grenade throwing occurred to harass the voters.

Generally, BE 2010 told that the Automated Election System performed as Expected. Although implementation needs a lot of fine–tuning particularly with regards to interfacing the system to the non-AES side of election and unsustainable queuing should be solved because this was the main reason of delay, frustrations, etc. in many precincts and polling places. The citizen voters came in large, 80% to 85% have voted and some participated to give solutions to problems encountered during the elections. Others went home and were included to those who were disenfranchised. The election violence and pre–automation fraud were still significant numbers in holding the elections. However, these were confined to certain areas and didn’t affect the national elections. Election handling by the COMELEC has significantly relaxed and has contributed to the high confidence of the voters with the AES. However, management and administration of the whole AES have been called for review due to many errors, mistakes, etc. were made during the elections.

Unfortunately, the press conference for BE 2010 preliminary report didn’t call much attention to the media. There were only two media personnel from the Philippine Daily Inquirer who attended because the attention of the media was focus on the results released by the COMELEC, held at the nearby PICC complex at the same time with the press conference of the BE 2010. As stated above, there were 12 foreign observers from the European Union who observed and keenly waited for the conclusions that BE 2010 had. The press conference, having not much of an attention, turned to be a one on one interview with CER chairperson Ramon C. Casiple.