Poll fraud in the 1800s: So, what else is new? - GOTCHA by Jarius Bondoc

First things first. Reader Gerry Malixi wrote to clarify two items about my piece weeks ago on Napocor’s exclusive contract to sell fly ash from its Luzon coal plants to Pozzalanic Philippines Inc.:

• His dad, Pablo Malixi, was appointed Napocor president in June 1991 and thus could not have signed the PPI deal in 1989. Then-Napocor president Ernesto Aboitiz did.

• Malixi became PPI director seven years after his Napocor stint.

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Dozens of laws govern Philippine elections. Decades of prison terms await violators. Document upon document are required from poll officials, candidates and voters. All these aim to protect the sanctity of the ballot. But as prominent election lawyer Romulo Macalintal quipped, they also reflect a basic distrust by election participants of each other.

He’s right. Candidates distrust poll officials and thus field precinct watchers. Election officials distrust voters and thus indelibly ink them upon casting their ballot. Voters distrust candidates and poll officials, so majority expect fraud despite the laws, prison terms and safeguards.

Countless are the ways of election cheating. Vote-buying and bribery have their many permutations, from direct hakot and feeding to lansadera and boycotting. Terrorism has worsened to a point that Comelec has placed under its direct control six provinces, six cities, 57 towns, five barangays and two sitios. Vote tallying and canvassing usually are marred by outright miscounting and dagdag-bawas.

If you think these are all products of modern-day greed and gadgetry, get a load of Oregon University Prof. Glenn May’s study of Philippine elections in the 1800s. From his account, "Civic Ritual and Political Reality: Municipal Elections in Late-19th Century Philippines" (A Past Recovered, New Day Publishers, 1987) many of the tricks played out at present were devised a hundred years ago.

May pored over extant records in Batangas churches and municipios of 42 elections for gobernadorcillo (town mayor) between 1887 and 1894. He found a wide gap between rules to keep elections honest and realities of vote-buying, ballot-switching, poll violence. "A long series of laws, decrees and circulars designed to promote the selection of able candidates and also to inject proper doses of dignity and probity into the proceedings," May noted. "But the reality was decidedly different. Although the Filipino participants dutifully listened to the ritualized speeches, rose from their chairs and sat down again at the appropriate times, said all the lines they were expected to say, and signed their names where they were expected to sign, they persistently failed to perceive the event in the way that the lawmakers evidently wanted them to perceive it. For Filipinos, and for some of the Spaniards who participated as well, something else was at stake than the opportunity to serve and please the Crown, and because it was, they transformed the ritual into to suit their needs. What the ritual became, in fact, was a genuine contest – a struggle for various types of power, both symbolic and real."

Municipal elections were usually held in April. Only the principalia participated, though not necessarily to vote. All male, they include the current gobenadorcillo and cabezas de barangay (village heads), cabezas reformados (past cabezas) and capitanes pasadors (ex-gobernadorcillos and other officeholders). They fought over the position of gobernadorcillo, for it was the highest position a Filipino may hold under the Spanish Crown. It meant control over tax collections, construction and maintenance of roads, bridges, schools and other public works, overseeing the town hall and jail, trying minor criminal and civil cases, and assembling evidence for major ones, and issuance of licenses. Other positions were for teniente mayor (vice mayor), juez de policia (police chief), juez de sementeras (superintendent of fields) and juez de ganados (superintendent of livestock).

On election day, the alcalde mayor (provincial governor) and his scribe would arrive at the municipio where the principalia are gathered, and with the cura (parish priest) oversee the balloting. After the ritual speeches about public service, dedication to duty and sanctity of suffrage, two urns would be brought out. The names of incumbent officials would be written individually on papeletas and placed in one urn; those of past officials, in the other urn. A boy who by law should be no more than seven years old would pick six slips of paper from each urn. The 12 participants and the incumbent gobernadorcillo would then proceed with the voting, while the rest of the principalia would wait at the courtyard.

The terna (secret balloting) would be for first and second choice for gobernadorcillo. After the tallying, the 13 would then vote for the four other positions. The scribe would write down the results and seal all ballots in an envelope for submission to the governor-general’s staff in Intramuros. It sometimes took months for the central authorities to affirm the results. But right after the voting, the scribe would announce the winners to the gathered principalia. At which time they would usually express dismay and raise objections like the winner being unjust or facing serious criminal charges or does not speak good Spanish. Such protests would further delay the affirmation of results.

Ideally, only members of the principalia who were not facing court charges or in arrears in tax payments were eligible for office. Too, they must be at least 25 years old, with visible means of support. And the electors were supposed to think not of friendship or favor but the common good. But this was not necessarily so. A protester in the 1890 election in Talisay claimed that both the leading candidates were ineligible but won just the same because they were proteges of the incumbent gobernadorcillo Tiburcio Burgos. In Balayan, participants complained that the winners were "men of no wealth" who merely were sponsored by sugar barons Lorenzo Lopez and Francisco Martines. Similar protests in Taal, Lemery, Sto. Tomas and Calaca were about the cura playing favorites.

There were worse violations. Election rules disallowed factions or parties since winners were expected to serve the entire community. Yet records turned up by May showed that rich families would put up entire slates, expecting the winners to exempt them from taxes yet pave roads and bridges leading to their haciendas. Thus, protests in Balayan were common about rival factions of the landed Lopez and Martinez clans. Same with the Roxases of Nasugbu and the Aguilas of San Jose. Other factions were secretly led by friars, and these gave birth to anti-friar and intellectual factions – and more protests against supposed subversives and agitators who were disloyal to the Crown and the Church. Some of the protests led to violent demonstrations at the municipio, the provincial capitol and in Manila.

The factionalism gave rise to election cheating. The 1892 protest of incumbent gobernadorcillo Miguel Malvar and 22 principales from Sto. Tomas made serious allegations of the conduct of the parish priest, Fr. Felix Garces of the Augustinian Recollects. They said Garces not only imposed excessive fees for baptisms, weddings and burials, but also had an illicit affair with the daughter of candidate Julio Meer. They also accused him of bribing the provincial governor with P500 to make Meer win the election. Worse, they said, Meer threw a banquet on the morning of election day despite an explicit ban on such gatherings for vote solicitation. The scribe allegedly cooked the selection of 12 voters, so much so that one of them, Nicolas Mantala, unable to read or write, voted orally and thus violated secret balloting. In the end, a rival Leodegario Meer garnered the highest number of votes in the tallying, but the scribe nonetheless wrote Julio Meer as winner. The central authorities called for a second election in which a Maximo Malvar won.

Bauan in 1890 had a similarly hot contest. Timoteo Cusi tallied one vote higher than Segundo Guia. A week later, Severino Maliuanag, a member of Guia’s faction, filed evidence that Cusi was credited for two votes that were actually for another candidate, Mateo Cusi. An alarmed provincial governor Jose Javier deducted two votes from Timoteo Cusi, but the fight didn’t end there. Timoteo Cusi appealed to Manila officials and produced two voters who swore that, while they had intended to vote for Don Timoteo, they erroneously had written Mateo. They said they had been calling Timoteo since childhood by his nickname, "Mateo." the governor-general restored Timoteo’s two votes. Still, provincial governor Javier appealed and said Timoteo was never nicknamed "Mateo." Sadly for the researching May, the records of that election ended there. He never got to see the ending, although a municipal record showed Timoteo serving as gobernadorcillo up to 1892.

There were other complaints. In Balayan in 1892, the Martinez sugar planter-family found out that majority of the cabezas de barangay were delinquent with tax payments and thus ineligible to participate. The clan offered to pay the arrears in exchange for votes for its proteges. In Talisay, a winning gobernadorcillo allegedly punished those who did not vote for him with forced labor during fiestas. In Nasugbu, a sugar baron was so displeased with gobernadorcillo Pedro Ruffy, a tenant in his estate, that he dispossessed the latter for going against his wishes. The planter also reportedly had other principalia tenants whipped when they voted against his slate.

So, what else is new?

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