World's eyes on Manila on election day

WASHINGTON – The Philippines’ first attempt on Monday at an automated election intended to curtail massive graft and fraud inherent to hand counts could lead to unintended disaster if the computerized system fails, US political and media analysts said.

“Fear of the unknown – will the machines work; will the power be reliable; will there be enough machines to allow every voter to cast his/her vote; can the software be manipulated? – accounts for part of the concern,” said Ernest Bower of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a bipartisan Washington-based foreign policy think tank.

The Washington Post and The Washington Times said latest surveys showed Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III way ahead of his competitors and it appeared likely he would win the presidential stakes.

“Voting machine capers aside, those numbers make this election hard to steal,” Brett Decker of the Times said in a report.

Aquino is “polling well above the margin of corruption, but so many hobbled voting machines introduce a new wild card into the picture,” Decker said.

If the computerized system “produces incredible or incomplete results,” unsuccessful candidates are likely to complain either that the system was rigged to cheat them or that it was designed to fail so that the unpopular Mrs. Arroyo could remain in office while the mess is sorted out, The Economist said on the eve of the polls.

“There’s little doubt Arroyo forces would mobilize to fill any unforeseen power vacuum,” the Times averred.

Blaine Harden of the Washington Post in a report said since his mother’s death, Aquino has come to embody a national yearning for decent leadership in the Philippines and has catapulted far ahead of the other candidates in the presidential polls.  

“While his record is regarded as thin, it is also apparently clean. Unlike so many politicians here, he has not been linked to scandal. His honest image – combined with his mother’s legacy of personal probity – has become the essence of his campaign,” the Post report said. 

Given Aquino’s lead of almost 2-to-1 over his two closest competitors in the final days of the campaign, the CSIS’s Bower said “one might wonder why headlines here focus on the potential for voting fraud, power outages and flawed software instead of key issues.”

The underlying factor is that Filipinos aren’t sure they can trust key institutions such as the Commission on Elections (Comelec), the authority responsible for the efficacy of the electoral process and managing the election, and given recent history they have good reasons to be wary, Bower said. 

Tapes of Mrs. Arroyo calling an official of the Comelec in the 2004 election seeking to ensure she would have an agreed upon margin of one million votes created a scandal and deeply scarred the public’s trust, he said.

“No matter who wins, democracy in the Philippines and indeed in Asia will be advanced by a smooth and – for the first time – automated election. The world’s eyes will be turned to Manila on May 10,” Bower said. 

“The Philippines needs a period of political stability so its governing institutions can mature and the economy can grow,” Michael Alan Hamlin, managing director of TeamAsia, a Manila-based consultancy, told The Washington Times. 

“An election perceived to be relatively clean and a peaceful transition of power would be a good start.”

Election observers

The Australian embassy in the Philippines, meantime, will be sending their staff as election observers.

Chief Superintendent Arturo Cacdac, Central Luzon police director, said the Australian observers are scheduled to monitor the elections in Pampanga, Tarlac and Bulacan.

On the other hand, 86 foreign observers representing people’s organizations and Church-based groups yesterday said the upcoming election is marred with apprehensions.

The 86 foreign observers from 11 countries who are participating in the People’s International Observers’ Mission (PIOM) are different from the 364 foreign poll observers accredited by the Comelec. 

 Bishop Elmer Bolocon of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) and convenor of PIOM, said their foreign guests came from Australia, Canada, United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, France, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands.     – With Ric Sapnu, Evelyn Macairan