unplaced Pinoy Elections 2007

Back in the Netherlands, still trying to get used to our 'easy' life.. this is my report on the elections of May 2007, due to all media attention I didnt want to risk to put it on the blog but now all safe and well, here's for the ones who havent read it yet..

May 17th 2007:
WOW! a lot has happened since the last post on the Pinoy Elections.
When I was writing the post I had no idea how much I would get involved in these crazy elections.

As of last Sunday, yours truly is an official member of the International Observatory Mission on the Elections of the Philippines 2007, and is cited today in all of the local news papers of Mindanao and had a presentation on the evening news last night!
....and all I ever wanted was just a simple medical research in a far off rural community... :)

As I wrote, the elections held last Monday the 14th, are a BIG issue in the Philippines. Because of the previous experience of rampant fraud and violence during the elections of 2004, a small group of different human right organizations has set up the International Observers Mission (IOM).
This group of international people and filipino human rights activists are sent to different electoral hot-spots (places that have been heavily militarized because they are supposed to be fraud sensitive) to observe and monitor the presence of military at voting sites (which is not allowed), the voting itself and the canvassing ( vote-counting) afterwards, all over the Philippines. They report cases of fraud, violence, cheating and other irregularities.

Last Sunday a friend and member of Karapatan (one of the most progressive human rights organisations here) invited me to go over to Davao to attend a meeting of the IOM on the human rights violations during this election-period. Little did I know that I was going to be presented as the 6th International Observer in front of all the local press of Mindanao. Completely unprepared and on the spot I was asked to give a speech on why the IOM was so necessary. A slip of the tongue: i mentioned one of the completely corrupt politicians (luckily i didnt say he was corrupt, rather that his practices are' eyebrow-raising') and I had to give interviews to snappy reporters asking me crazy questions if I was influenced by the communists and if I was aware that the IOM groups are suspected to have links with the communist party. GREAT: I still needed to extend my tourist- visa.

So there we were on Monday the 14th: me (proudly representing the Netherlands ;)), a boy from Scotland, his girlfriend from Germany, an older professor from Australia, 2 hilarious non-english speaking south koreans, and a big group of super-friendly and active filippinos, on our way to the rural area of Compostela Valley, a hot spot where on the night before our visit and on the morning of our visit 2 activists of the progressive parties were killed.

A short introduction to the most common filippino electoral frauds:
- Already long before the elections the military holds meetings in the peasant communities to propagate against the progressive parties by linking them to the communists and terrorists. As you can imagine, these meetings aren't exactly fun and informing, but rather threatening and intimidating.
- Many people of the opposition parties have been killed or receive threats by 'unidentified men', mostly activists of the progressive parties are targeted.
-Vote buying: this is happening on large scale: electoral candidates will go into communities and offer the community-captain a large sum of money if he can convince his community to vote for him. Some voters are bought individually (200 pesos) and others are donated sacks of rice, canned food, meat. I have seen our neighbour last week shipping in 4 sacks of rice and a large amount of beer and canned goods. Our neighbour is a very poor organizer of peasants... At least once every 4 years the poor people get to see some of their tax money back from the politicians.
- Dag-dag bawas: fantastic that the filipinos have an actual expression for this fraud which means: shaving and padding: taking off some (or usually more) zeros of the total votes from one candidate and adding up some or usually more zeros to another candidate.
from 90 for Kees and 10 for Piet to 9 for Kees and 1000 for Piet.
- Brown outs, the places where the voting and the vote counting takes place all have electricity and in this region the supply is good. for the last 6 months no brown out has been signalled. But anything can happen on election day.

With this knowledge in our mind, we arrived at our first site, passing 3 military checkpoints in one road(I didnt know the queen was visiting?? theres just military men all over): an elementary school where the voting of 3 municipalities was held. The voters have to find their names on the list of the municipality where they live, report themselves at the electoral staff and are given a ballot. (this is a mega ballot since there are so many seats of government they have to vote for)
And already we could see some holes: a group of registrated voters could not find their names on the list. No name: no vote. Others mentioned of many diseased voters still present on the name lists: name = vote. Luckily we didnt spot any military men around the voting sites, but some of the present electoral staff told us they had left as we arrived...
Around 15.00 the voting is finished, and the canvassing (vote counting) can begin. I have to admit that I have never seen the vote counting of the dutch elections (funny Im not so interested in that since i cant believe there will be fraud during our elections, but who knows.....) but this seemed to me like total chaos.
First the votes are counted by the teachers of the elementary schools where the voting actually took place. Because of the many seats to vote for (12senator, 1congresman, 1mayor, 1vicemayor, 8councelors, 1governer, 1 vicegoverner and the partylist- im not kidding) this is quite a complex job and takes some hours.
The big papers with the amount of votes for the candidates is put in an envelope and sealed (with a stamp, really, the Albert Heijn has better sealing stickers) and put in a pre-war ballot box, which is completely rotten old and all have different colors. It just screams to be replaced with another box with fake votes.
The same night the box is transported to the municipal hall where all the boxes from the surrounding communities come together to be recounted by a special board of vote counters. They recount all the votes under the eyes of the watchers, which have been sent by the different participating parties to make sure theres no cheating in their disadvantage. Respect to these people, because as i am writing, they are still counting, and are expected to finish in about 2 weeks. (These elections are made possible by red bull) Again this aint no joke.

Wow it was such a crazy site there, about 20 people completely tired in this sweaty hot room, bending over huge papers, trying to figure out whats what. people coming in and out, mistakes in the ballot counting fixed with typ-ex. How can anything that come out of this be possibly truth full?
Afterwards we went back with the group to our great beach resort (yes.. your not an international observer for nothing) and had some interviews with victims and witnesses of human right violations during this election. The government is structurally working against any oppostion by severe military repression, black propaganda and even killings and kidnappings of prominent oppostion voices. The group was very pleasant and the stories of the filipino activists so admiring but in the same time so frustrating. As I have tried to explain about the small chances of power shifts and the very marginalized position of the partylist (only 20 percent of the seats), its just crazy to see that still any attempt for opposition or progressive politics is completely blocked.
The next day we visited another canvassing site, this time in New Bataan, where only a few weeks ago a small 9 year old girl was killed by the military. She was naked, taking a bath in the river. The military claimed she was a child-warrior, a member of the armed struggle in the mountains. The gun that shot her was as big as her tiny body. After pressure from the parents and several human rights organisations, the military was forced to apologies, but still nobody is arrested and the people have no hope in the investigations the military started.
Again nothing suspicious was seen by us, the group of white observers and the few military we had seen on our way to the site would smile friendly and even let us take pictures of them.

Thus more shocking was the news that reached us when we rode back to Davao. Just as we had entered the city around 19h, we received a message that the canvassing site in New Bataan was experiencing a brown out, outside it was completeley surrounded by miliary men and the board had decided to stop the counting since the chief had received a deadthreat message saying if he wouldnt stop the counting he would be killed before 21h.
I felt like i was going to throw up. What the hell is this? How is that possible? We were responsible to observe the elections in New Bataan and as soon as we had left everything had gone wrong. But we could not go back... it was too dangerous to ride back in the dark.. but imagine... new bataan is a small village that we just had happened to visit, its just one of the million small villages of the rural areas of the Philippines. What has happened in those other sites, where we did not go, where the media did not go?
The day after we had to present our findings to the local press. Aaaah torment, we were given the podium to speak out against these fake elections, the microphone to scream out that there is no democracy in this country, but on the other hand, i still have to stay in this nondemocratic militarized country for the next 2 months, I still have to arrange my visa at the consulate...

So we discretely dinnounced that the elections are very complex and very fraud sensitive. The presence of the military is a direct block for the democracy. And now my picture is in the news paper, sitting next to the australian professor who holds op proof of black propaganda against the progressive partylists by the military. I guess Ill try to get my visa next week... ;)

I dont know what you have heard on the news about bombs planned by the communist.. All i can say.. the media and the government of the philippines go quite well together, add some militarization and red-fear and you get a nice report to that.
2 people got killed in another region where a school where vote counting took place was set on fire. And still every day brings new casualties... Everybody is still holding his breath.. a deep breath since it seemes to just start with the end of election day...