EDITORIAL - Voting in Maguindanao

Even without a horrific massacre and the indictment of nearly all of the local officials of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, elections in the ARMM have been controversial. In the 2004 presidential race, questions were raised about the validity of the vote count particularly in Maguindanao, where President Arroyo’s closest rival Fernando Poe Jr. received not a single vote in the towns of Ampatuan and Datu Piang. The election commissioner in charge of the ARMM at the time, Virgilio Garcillano, was overheard telling a woman, believed to be President Arroyo, in wiretapped phone conversations that Maguindanao would not pose a problem for her presidential bid. The province gave the President 193,938 votes, against Poe’s 59,892.

In 2007, Maguindanao gave the administration’s senatorial slate a clean 12-0 sweep, even as the team was trounced in most other parts of the country. This was after Maguindanao election supervisor Lintang Bedol said he lost election results and then claimed to have found them.

Now the province is in deep turmoil over the indictment of all the Ampatuans occupying public office in connection with the Maguindanao massacre. The national government has taken over the ARMM, with President Arroyo putting in charge the secretary of the interior and local government, Ronaldo Puno. The selection of Puno makes sense, considering his position. But it has also raised alarm, considering that he has been accused of involvement in vote manipulation in elections since 1992, when Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago claimed she was cheated of the presidency through a vote-shaving and padding operation ran from the Sulo Hotel.

Amid heightened tension following the massacre, the Commission on Elections has been asked to place Maguindanao under its control for the 2010 race, and to hold the vote ahead of the rest of the country. It will be the country’s first foray into fully automated elections. One glitch could lead to a failure of elections – a scenario being painted by National Security Adviser-cum-Defense Secretary Norberto Gonzales. That scenario must not come to pass, and every effort must be made to ensure that the vote in Maguindanao will be peaceful, orderly, free and credible. The province has become notorious for a grisly massacre; it should also not gain notoriety for destroying the 2010 vote.