Old, new problems mar elections in the Visayas

CEBU, Philippines - Old and new problems, mostly about defective PCOS machines, were encountered in the conduct of the May 13 elections in Bacolod City, Negros Occidental, Bohol and Negros Oriental provinces, and in Tacloban City.

Voters complained about malfunctioning PCOS machines, marking pens, overcrowded precincts, missing names in the list, wrong and pre-shaded ballots, vote-buying and even intimidation between contending camps of candidates.

Negros Occidental provincial election supervisor Wil Arceno said he received reports of intimidation and coercion among opposing camps.

In Moises Padilla town, there were reports of road blockades in Brgy. Inolingan, Odiong and Montilla, where the caretakers of the haciendas there have denied passage to the voters.

Colonel Jon Aying, 303rd Infantry Brigade commander, said they have gathered evidences of these incidents and they will file charges against the caretakers for violating the people's right to suffrage.

A report from ABS-CBN News Iloilo said the Comelec in Antique has temporarily suspended voting at six clustered precincts (with 664 registered voters) in Bugasong town of Antique, after the board of election inspectors (BEI) discovered that the wrong official ballots were delivered to the area.

Instead of ballots for Bugasong, 819 official ballots intended for Barangay Gawaba in Odiongan town of Romblon province were delivered to the school in Bugasong. The Comelec in the Antique town immediately turned over the swapped ballots to the official cargo forwarder for shipment yesterday.

In Escalante City, Negros Occidental a total of 11 PCOS machines malfunctioned, and four were not used because there were no CF cards attached to these. This prompted the BEIs there to revert to manual voting, making the process slower.

The old problems still persisted: Opposing camps accused each other of vote-buying, and some voters complained of pre-shaded ballots. A resident in Talisay City meanwhile passed out in the middle of a long queue due to heat stroke, while two persons were arrested in Hinobaan town for violating the Comelec gun ban.

There were also defective PCOS machines in several precincts of the towns of Pulupandan, Manapla, Ilog, La Castellana and Isabela, and the cities of Kabankalan, Cadiz, Silay, Bago and Bacolod.

In Negros Oriental, a few hours after the voting opened at 7 a.m. in most of the 1,076 clustered voting precincts, some PCOS machines malfunctioned.

In Dumaguete City, two machines started rejecting ballots, but city election officer Jerome Brillantes said the back-up memory cards may have been wrongly inserted by the BEIs causing the malfunction.

In Tagbilaran City of Bohol province at about 8:30 a.m., one precinct had to use the reserved PCOS machine, and another stopped the voting after the first 80 voters then resumed shortly after, with the ballots just kept in a box, until the defective machine was fixed five hours later.

Three more machines in as many precincts bogged down midway after about a third of the close to 900 voters have voted.

City election assistant Beatriz Inting confirmed having received the complaints in the morning yet and said that city election officer Jonas Biliran already sent the technician to solve the problem, with the voting put on hold until 2:15 p.m.

Many senior citizens have complained of fatigue while lining up and had to forego voting, because the start of the voting was delayed for three to four hours when four PCOS malfunctioned and left nearly 4,000 voters waiting. Many skipped lunch and a woman fainted because of staying in the queue longer than expected.

An 83-year-old man in Sibulan, Negros Oriental got disappointed when told that his name was not in the list of registered voters of that town. His wife's name was however in the list. A volunteer of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) went to the Comelec office to verify and found out that the elderly man was delisted for his failure to vote in the past two elections. ---Danny B. Dangcalan, Judy Flores Partlow and Angeline Valencia