Lanao Sur voters want successful special polls

ISLAMIC CITY OF MARAWI — With policemen brandishing M16s guarding the polling center and other unarmed police serving as board of election inspectors, hundreds of voters patiently lined up under the sun on the narrow access road fronting the Taluan Elementary School in Lumba-a Bayabao municipality some 40 minutes ride away from this capital city of Lanao del Sur, to make sure that this time their votes are indeed put on the ballot and read by the voting machines. At the narrow gated entrance to the school located at barangay Cormatan Lumban, the crowd of voters was thickest and people were starting to sweat both from the late-morning sun and the jostling. Many voters were insistent to be let into the school compound, and were becoming impatient and vocal, but otherwise the mood remained tolerable. A squad of policemen armed with automatic rifles stood behind the gate and at other points where people could possibly slip into the school through the cyclone-wire fence. A police officer, half-shouting, told the crowd to wait their turn. "We're allowing them in, but in batches of ten so that the lines are more orderly. We're also giving first priority to old people and women," explained another police officer. Thus began the whole-day voting in dozens of other precincts like this, as the most important step in the special elections held Thursday in seven municipalities and selected precincts of eight other municipalities of Lanao del Sur. The special elections were ordered by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) for selected areas in Lanao del Sur, Sarangani and Basilan provinces as remedy for the failure of elections in these areas on May 10. Since it rained in this area the night before the elections, the Taluan school grounds were muddied, and wide bamboo planks were laid side by side as temporary catwalks across the grounds leading from the gate to the actual voting area. A traffic of voters, poll watchers, and police had begun to build up along the catwalks. Inside the voting precincts, veiled women and sun burnt farmers quietly sat inside schoolrooms or stood in line just outside, waiting their turn to vote. A few others were checking the printed list of voters posted outside the rooms. Young police trainees, who were unarmed, this time served as the board of election inspectors (BEI). With focused concentration on their faces, they attended to the task of assisting voters in going through the voting process — from getting their ballots to marking their thumbnails with indelible ink. GMANews.TV observed a policewoman also performing the Comelec-regulated duty of an assistor. An assistor is a person who is authorized to help illiterate voters select their chosen ones from among dozens of candidates per position, and from among 187 groups in the case of party-list groups. Police replace teachers as BEIs A Comelec resolution dated May 28, which stated election rules specific to the June 3 special elections, had earlier allowed personnel of the Philippine National Police to perform as BEI's, to replace teachers who were unable to perform this duty. The Comelec move to directly involve the police in BEI duty received mixed signals from among local lawyers who are here to observe the special elections. One lawyer said this move was advantageous, for two reasons. First, she said, since the police are trained in security-related duties, they are considered more able to protect themselves and the voting facilities against private armed groups out to disrupt the elections or force the voters to favor certain candidates. Second, she added, since the police teams deployed in Lanao del Sur for BEI duty were shipped in from other regions like Northern Mindanao and Zamboanga, they are deemed less susceptible to political pressure from local ruling clans and other candidates' families. Another lawyer said, however, that the local teachers' vulnerability to coercion by armed groups and to political suasion by candidates who are their clanmates could have been addressed by the Comelec in other ways. Teachers could have functioned better as BEIs, she said, if more police were assigned to protect the polling places. As for teacher BEI's who were sucked into partisan acts on election day, she said there was an earlier Comelec resolution that provided for teachers from other areas being assigned to BEI duty elsewhere. The Comelec declared a total failure of elections in seven municipalities and a partial failure in eight other municipalities of Lanao del Sur during the general elections last May 10, partly because teachers assigned as BEIs were either absent or could not freely perform their functions in many voting centers due to election-related violence. In other cases, however, teachers here doggedly performed their duties on May 10 despite election violence. In one incident in Tugaya town, for example, the teachers were shown on video protecting a Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machine at the height of a shootout between armed groups linked to rival politicians. The teachers were even cited "for courage under fire" by members of an international observers' mission who were poll-watching in the same voting center during the shootout. Despite their credible showing in Tugaya and other areas, however, teachers were unable to prevent many election irregularities, including acts of coercion directed not at them but at the voters as a whole, which led to the Comelec decision to declare a failure of elections. Family feuds The failure of elections on May 10 and the holding of special elections this June 3 have deep social roots in the Moro-Islamic blend of cultures that pervade vast areas of Mindanao. Politics in Lanao del Sur, like in other provinces and towns that compose the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), is fiercely pursued by large, well-entrenched and tightly-knit clans with loyalist community following and, oftentimes, backed up by private armed groups. Armed family feuds, called rido in some areas, pre-dated elections and judicial processes for resolving conflicts among rival clans. Until now, rido feuds have often resulted in deaths of innocent clan members. Several Moro-Muslim generations have already accepted and adjusted to the modern process of elections as introduced by the American colonial regime in the 1930s. Still, elders of clans see no wrong in agreeing among themselves to pre-elect their favorite candidates, and imposing the decision on entire communities under their spheres of influence, in much the same way that leaders of the religious group Iglesia ni Cristo also impose their bloc-vote decisions on all INC members. Rival Maranao clans see in elections a way to legitimize their choices and regulate their conflicts. But at the same time, clan politics give them ways to short-cut the election process. In the extreme case, like in neighboring Maguindanao province in the 2004 and 2007 elections, pervasive control by the Ampatuan clan is seen as having been instrumental in some national candidates suffering zero or near-zero votes. Voting irregularities Despite Comelec's efforts to ensure tighter control over the June 3 special elections, a report from the Legal Network for Truthful Elections (LENTE) monitoring center indicate that partisan campaigning and flying voters are still a problem. In Masiu town, for example, a LENTE volunteer reported on Thursday afternoon that poll watchers, who are supposed to be protecting the vote, were shouting candidates' names to the voters while inside the precincts. Also in the same LENTE report from Masiu town, "voter doppelgangers [flying voters] keep returning in queues to vote over and over." Knowledgeable observers based in Marawi City and the hotly-contested towns of Lanao del Sur said to GMANews.TV that the running rate for vote-buying in this special election ranges from P3,000 upwards. But the voters of Lumba-a Bayabao appear to be convinced that the use of flying voters no longer pays in the moral sense. Some Lumba-a Bayabao residents have set up a makeshift signboard on the road to the Taluan Elementary School with the sign: "Warning! Flying voters not allowed." — KBK, GMANews.TV