The local official was able to shade a stack of ballots up to four inches thick, possibly amounting to more than a hundred ballots. When the official was finished, the members of the Board of Election Inspectors (BEIs) helpfully and dutifully fed the pre-shaded ballots into the precinct count optical scan machines.

In other precincts across the ARMM, vote buying was reportedly rampant. Ballot secrecy was virtually non-existent all over the ARMM, as some voters were being coached by as many as four people at a time on which name to shade on his ballot.

The automation of the elections may have helped solve some of the persistent problems in elections in the ARMM. For decades, polls in the region were perceived to be a joke, as both local and national officials try to manipulate the counting of the votes on the local and national levels.

But with the counting now automated, poll fraud in the ARMM is shifting from the counting to the voting.

The Citizens Coalition for ARMM Electoral Reform (CCARE), a local poll watchdog based in the ARMM, revealed this new shift in poll fraud as local candidates try to find ways to adjust to the modernization of the elections.

“Nagupgrade nga ang botohan, nag uupgrade rin naman ang dayaan,” said CCARE secretary general Jumda Saba-ani. (We may have upgraded the voting process, but now they are also upgrading the cheating.)

Saba-ani said that while poll automation has made it more difficult for local and national candidates to cheat in the counting (at least for now), the results of the elections are still vulnerable because the candidates are going to the very core of the elections: the voter.

Whereas before, the voter was dismissed by some local candidates as unnecessary because they can cheat in the counting anyway, now, voters are being manipulated, harassed, bought off, or simply misrepresented.

In Sulu, for example, Saba-ani said their volunteers could only watch in horror as a local candidate’s father, himself a former local leader, locked himself in the precinct along with the BEIs at nine in the morning on election day, or just two hours after the polls opened. The elder then proceeded to shade all the ballots that he could find, while the BEIs looked on cooperatively, and while the poll watchers who were locked outside peered through the windows. Afterwards, the BEIs then fed the tampered ballots into the PCOS machine, where the ballots were properly counted in favor of his son.

Needless to say, the son won in the election.

Saba-ani however refused to name the officials involved because of fears for the safety of their volunteers.

In other cases, Saba-ani noted how ballot secrecy was violated “in almost all the precincts” in the ARMM. Voters are supposed to be able to vote in secret so that they are not intimidated by the candidates. However, in almost all the ARMM areas, this principle was violated. In some cases, Saba-ani said that voters were being coached by up to four people.

“Ang vote-buying, talamak rin, even inside the precinct,” Saba-ani said. (Vote buying was also rampant, even inside the precinct.)

Other persistent problems include the intimidation of voters and watchdog groups by politicians and their private armed men, and the hauling of voters to the polling precincts.

While these incidents have always been present in past elections, Saba-ani said these violations were more prevalent now because of the need by local candidates to offset their inability to manipulate the count. CCARE says that while there were complaints of PCOS machines bogging down and of some machines failing to transmit their results because of the lack of a cellphone signal, the count was an improvement over the 2010 and 2007 elections.

Taguntong says that while CCARE sees the need for more improvements in the 2016 elections, the watchdog group was happy in that elections were “relatively” peaceful and orderly in the ARMM. In fact, Taguntong says proudly, there was only one case where a town declared a total failure of elections. In previous elections, failure of elections was a fairly common event.

In addition, Taguntong said that violent incidents were reduced significantly, although there were still many incidents that would shock those unfamiliar with ARMM elections. There were reports of intimidation and harassment of both voters, teachers, poll watchers, and watchdog groups, with candidates smashing cellphones of poll watchers who try to take pictures of poll fraud. Yet Taguntong says, by their records, poll violence may have gone down by as much as 70 percent compared to previous elections.

“Before, may armed confrontations and continuous shooting incidents ng mga private armies,” Taguntong said. “Now there is less of that.”

One interesting trend, Taguntong relates, is what may be called the “democratization” of vote buying. Before, only the local ward leaders earn during elections by collecting money from candidates, hauling in voters, and manipulating the counting. But in the 2013 elections, candidates were forced to fork money over to actual voters to make sure that they vote for the candidates. If only for this reason, Taguntong says, money that otherwise would have gone to local officials was spread more evenly to the voting public.

But the balimbing syndrome in Philippine politics has its roots from way back, although it was only popularized after the EDSA revolt when politicians found it so convenient to switch sides depending on whoever is in power in Malacanang.

For today’s Data a Day question:

Who among the country’s presidents had switched or formed their own parties to get elected?

The answer, of course, can be found in the PCIJ’s MoneyPolitics website. But before you give in t0 the temptation to peek, please do try to answer the question with a bit of research. Good luck!

Oh, the answer can be found here.

Who among the country’s presidents had switched or formed their own parties to get elected?

?Malaysiakini, quoting Harakah’s online news site, HarakahDaily, said copies of the party newspaper of PAS (Pan Malaysia Islamic Party) were said to have been seized in Malacca, Negri Sembilan, Kedah, and Perak.

A Twitter post, Malaysiakini said, also revealed that copies of newspaper of the PKR or People’s Justice Party of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim were also confiscated in four states on Thursday, May 23.

At the same time, Malaysiakini said a ban on the conduct of candle-light vigils is emerging.

“Politically-motivated candlelight vigils have reached a level where the police could no longer tolerate, Malaysiakini reported, adding that CPO Mohmad Salleh had urged people to “voice their grievances through legal channels instead.”

The marketing manager of Haraka Daily, Ahmad Faisal Tawang, had said he received calls from vendors in the morning, informing him that not only were ministry representatives seizing copies of the paper, were also raiding the vendors’ premises,” the Malaysiakini story said.

Tawang was also quoted as saying that copies of the paper’s Friday edition dated May 24-26, which featured the frontpage headline ‘GST hadiah BN untuk rakyat (GST is BN’s gift to the rakyat)’ were seized.

Malaysiakini said about 500 copies of the paper’s edition were allegdly seized in Malacca, and more than 1,000 were taken in Alor Setar, and Kedah.

Those arrested were Tian Chua, an officer of the People’s Justice Party of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim; and Haris Ibrahim, leader of a rights activists group ABU or Anything But Umno.

Malaysiakini said the day-time arrest of Chua and Ibrahim were “believed to be in relation to a recent anti-electoral fraud forum in Kuala Lumpur.”

The arrest of Chua and Ibrahim came hours after prosecutors charged student leader Adam Adli, 24, with sedition for “seditious statements that included calling for people to ‘go down to the streets to seize back our power’ while addressing a political forum,” according to the Asian Wall Street Journal.

The newspaper said Adam had pleaded innocent at a Kuala Lumpur district court, was released on bail, and told to attend a hearing on July 2. If convicted, he faces a three-year jail term and a fine.

The Asian Wall Street Journal also reported that Chua managed to post on Twitter that “police detained him at an airport and told him he was being held for sedition.”

On the other hand, the newspaper said, “Mr. Haris was held separately, but it was not immediately clear what he was being investigated for.”

“After his arrest, Mr. Chua tweeted that Malaysians should not allow themselves to be ‘overtaken by fear (but should) continue to assemble peacefully and have faith,’” the newspaper added.

Last May 5, Malaysia held general elections that saw Prime Minister Najib Razak’s Barisan National Party, in power since 1957, winning by a slim majority. The party bagged 133 of the 222 parliamentary seats up for grabs.

In contrast, the three-party opposition coalition of former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim won only 89 seats, despite an 80-percent voter turnout.

Anwar, a personal friend of ousted Philippine president and now Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada, had called the poll results the worst in Malaysia’s history.

His coalition had frowned upon plans of followers to hold protest rallies but Anwar had been quoted in the news media as saying, “we must be allowed to express ourselves properly in stadiums or in the vicinity of a public space.”

Malaysia’s Sedition Act is a 1948 law that was enacted first by the colonial regime of British Malaya. It bans speech with “seditious tendency”, or which would “bring into hatred or contempt or to excite disaffection against” the government or engender “feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races”.

These issues drive the two-day Stockholm Internet Forum 2013 (SIF13) that opens today, May 22 in this country that ranks top in the world for leveraging the potentials of the Internet, according to the latest Web Index.

The forum focuses on two themes — Internet Freedom and Security, and Internet Freedom and Development. Policymakers, netizens, techies, activists, and business and civil society representatives from 93 countries are participants.

(The PCIJ is attending the conference on invitation of the forum organizers, namely, the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, .Se or The Internet Infrastructure Foundation of Sweden, and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency or SIDA.)

At the reception for delegates on Tuesday, Fadi Chehade, president of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), called the Internet “a free gift for all the people.” It would thus be wrong for any one party, organization, or government to propose to control or govern it by itself, he said.

While some countries like the United States have played a big part in developing it, Chehade notes that even the US acknowledges that there is need everywhere for this “great resource.”

“No one organization, no one country, no one government, no one, period, can control the Internet,” he said. “And we must respect it and govern it like that.”

However, across nations and regions of the world, he noted that some parties have done “a pretty miserable job” of managing the Internet.

“The conundrum’ that confronts governments, civil society, academia, and business is precisely how to manage “this resources that spans the planet and crosses borders.”

The one and only one answer, he said, is that, “together, together” all stakeholders must do the job.

Yet, “it’s not just about multistakeholders, multiple parties coming together to work on an imopt resource.” More importantly, “it’s about multi-equal stakeholders. It’s having everyone at the table with equal voice participating in the governance of this resource.”

After all, the peoples of the developing world form the bulk of the Internet community. According to Chehade, of the 750 mllion people on Internet by 2005, 75 percent came form the developing world.

By 2015, at least 2 billion people are forecast to be on the Internet, and with over 70 percent or the next billion coming still from the developing world, he said.

Sadly, Chehade said people from less affluent nations are not yet fully engaged in managing and governing the Internet, even as “it something that they deserve… how to govern together the internet.”

Some governments seem to think that it is a task they must do. Chehade said a recent conversation he had with the leader of a Latin American country seems instructive.

“He told me: ‘It’s this simple, the Internet is very powerful, we are government, we love power, so the conclusion is we need to govern the Internet,’” Chehade said.

Still, the person was probably one of the more honest government officials he has met. Chehade said he was not speaking out to attack governments but “not all governments are created equal… (and) there are governments that do not understand multistakeholder development.”

For its part, ICANN has ceased being “just a money collector” and recently launched efforts to “change the DNA” of the organization.

ICANN, he said, now operates from Los Angeles in california, Istanbul in Turkey, and in Singapore, in its effort to grow into a global organization, and not just a US entity. “For too long,” he said, “ICANN has remained mostly a start-up in its mentality.”

“We are also pushing an internationalized domain name system and (to) diversify the domain name system,” he said.

In the same spirit of the Stockholm Internet Forum — Internet Freedom for Global Development,” Chehade said, “iCANN must embrace its public responsibility… be a publicly responsible organization” and “not just a money collector.”

“We have a role in enabling many parts of the Internet, and not just sit back and collect the change,” Cheahde said. “The new ICANN must embrace its responsibility to the public and to the developing world.”

Because he said he grew up “in places where freedom was not there… and lost many friends who spoke their mind,” Chehade said he realized early on that “freedom to choose is the most important thing.”

“The Internet has become the most powerful weapon for people to choose what they want,” he said. The Internet is “not only about democracy; it’s about allowing people to choose.”

Freedom from want, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the Internet enables all these and more freedoms, he said. “We have a responsibility to enable these freedoms close to the everyone in the world… let us all be leaders.”

The Liberal Party (LP) was founded by Manuel Roxas after the last war as a breakaway group from the Nacionalista Party (NP). Contesting Sergio Osmena’s leadership and candidacy in the 1946 presidential elections, Roxas led the so-called “Liberal-wing” of the NP and formed the LP. He ran against Osmena in the elections and won as the first president of the third republic.

Two would-be presidents would later abandon the Liberal Party in favor of the Nacionalista Party. In 1953, Ramon Magsaysay failed to bag LP support for his candidacy so he left and joined the opposing party NP. The same happened over a decade later in 1965 with Ferdinand Marcos defecting to the NP.

Marcos, however, went on to form his own party in 1978, the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL). Initially, KBL was formed as an umbrella coalition, which included the NP. But Marcos had a falling out with some members of the NP, which resulted in the formation of another political party: an alliance against Marcos and the KBL, the United Nationalist Democratic Organization or UNIDO. UNIDO was formed by Salvador Laurel who became Corazon Aquino’s running mate in 1986.

After the 1987 EDSA Revolution, the country saw a further rise in the number of political parties. Among these was Jose Cojuangco Jr.’s Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino or LDP where Fidel V. Ramos was a member.

In 1992, LDP endorsed Ramon Mitra as its presidential candidate, leaving Ramos without a political party to support him. This led to the creation of yet another party, Lakas, which later merged with the National Union of Christian Democrats. It came to be known as Lakas-NUCD and became the ruling party in the House after its founder, Ramos, won in the 1992 presidential elections and defeated Mitra. The party later changed its name to Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats or what is now called Lakas-CMD.

Another president who formed his own political party is Joseph Estrada. He was part of the Nacionalista Party and the now-defunct Grand Alliance for Democracy, which was among the opposition parties during Corazon Aquino’s administration. After being elected as senator in 1987, Estrada defected to the Liberal Party and in 1991, left the LP and formed the Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino (PMP). A year later, he ran as the vice presidential candidate of the Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC). In 1998, he co-founded the Laban ng Malayang Masang Pilipino, a coalition of PMP, NPC, and LDP for his presidential bid.

Estrada’s successor, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, also formed her own party, the Kabalikat ng Malayang Pilipino or Kampi. Originally a member of LDP, Arroyo left the LDP and formed Kampi in 1997 for the 1998 presidential elections. She, however, ran as candidate for vice president under Lakas-NUCD, with Jose de Venecia as her running mate. Lakas afterward supported her candidacy as president in the 2004 elections and then merged with Kampi in 2009, forming the Lakas-Kampi-CMD.

To know more about the country’s presidents, view our Public Profiles section of PCIJ’s MoneyPolitics Online. — Charmaine Lirio, PCIJ

Five of Pangasinan’s six district representatives in the 15th Congress were re-elected for another term in the 2013 midterm elections: Jesus “Boying” Celeste (first district), Leopoldo Bataoil (second district), Ma. Georgina de Venecia (fourth district), Kimi Cojuangco (fifth district), and Marlyn Primicias-Agabas (sixth district).

Of the five, several are just continuing where their relatives have left off: De Venecia is the wife of former House Speaker Jose de Venecia, while Cojuangco is the wife of former Rep. Mark Cojuangco, son of former Marcos associate Eduardo ‘Danding’ Cojuangco.

The only Pangasinan district representative who is not a reelectionist is really just stepping back in order to let the original district representative (her mother) take her seat. Ma. Rachel Arenas (third district) is being replaced by her mother Rosemary ‘Baby’ Arenas.

Both Agabas and the older Arenas ran unopposed.

With almost the same people representing the province for the 16th Congress, statistics is all a matter of change or consistency, improvement or injury. This data was culled from the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism’s (PCIJ) MoneyPolitics online database, a citizen’s resource, research, and analysis tool on elections, public funds, and governance in the Philippines.

Among the five reelectionists, more than half a billion pesos work of Priority Development Assistance Funds (PDAF) have already been released for the province from June 2010 to June 2012. However, the effect of the P631,156,000 in Pangasinan PDAFs released since 2010 are still to be felt on the living and working conditions of the Pangasinenses.

Latest records show that in 2009, Pangasinan has an annual per capita poverty threshold (or minimum amount necessary for survival) of P17,731 and a poverty incidence rate (or percentage of people living below the poverty line) of 25.0, a little lower than the country’s average which is 26.5.

Pangasinan’s poverty incidence rate, however, is significantly higher than that of its neighboring provinces such as Benguet (5.80), Nueva Vizcaya (8.70), Tarlac (19.8), Ilocos Sur (17.0), and Zambales (18.3) although it remains lower than Nueva Ecija (31.1) and La Union (30.6).

The PDAF is a yearly lump-sum fund allocated for the pet projects of legislators.

In his first term as congressman, Bataoil was allowed to identify projects worth  P149 million or about 22.2% of the province’s total pork from June 2010 to June 2012. He was followed by Celeste with P125 million or 19.8%.

Rachel Arenas had the lowest percentage: 7.91% or a total pork of only P50 million during her second term in 2010.

Do you want to know more about your government officials, how much they are worth, how much they spend of your taxpayers’ money, and where they spend it on? Or do you simply want to know how much they spend in order to win their elective positions? Visit the PCIJ’s MoneyPolitics database here and look up your favorite politician!

QUEZON CITY—There were more election lapses reported by its 3,000 volunteers spread all over the country last Monday, compared to the 2010 Presidential Elections, the Legal Network for Truthful Elections (LENTE), claimed in a press conference here Friday.

LENTE is a non-partisan nationwide network of lawyers, law students, paralegals and trained volunteers that has been monitoring the country’s polls since 2007.

“Nakakalungkot isipin na parang hindi po tayo natuto from past mistakes. Our problems are still the same—or even worse,” lawyer Kenjie Aman, President of LENTE’s National Secretariat, said.

Aman said “problems” like vote-buying, vote-selling, PCOS machine breakdowns, voters’ list discrepancies, the lack of ballots, the low-level training of the board of election inspectors (BEIs), oversized ballots and thermal paper, and the snail-paced transmission of votes marred last Monday’s midterm elections.

Worse, these recurring electoral lapses had disenfranchised many voters, the group said. The organization expected that the poll body would resolve them before the 2013 elections, since this was already the second time that the country is undergoing automated elections.

“Hindi naman masama na mag-expect tayo ng mataas… because they promised that (this year’s elections) would be okay,” Aman added. Comelec claimed that this year’s PCOS machine glitches (200 of 77,000) are lower compared to the 2010 presidential elections (400 of 70,000). To this, LENTE executive director Ona Carintos said: “It’s not about the issue of numbers. Basta may mga hindi nakakaboto, may problema ang ating eleksyon.”

“There was no genuine elections—not in accordance with international standards of inclusiveness, transparency, accountability and public confidence in elections,” Aman told reporters Friday.

Almost all of LENTE’s regional desk volunteers reported that persons with disabilities (PWDs) had a hard time casting their votes last Monday, since most of the polling centers in the country did not follow the Commission on Elections (Comelec) Resolution 9485 on Accessible Polling Places for Persons With Disability (PWD), pregnant women, and detained voters. LENTE noted that most of the polling areas for PWDs, senior citizens and pregnant women were still located in the polling centers’ second and some still on the fourth floors.

LENTE’s Robee Ilagan, on the other hand, says that even though there were no reports of violence on Election Day in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, the voting hour only started at 9 a.m. and closed as early as 4 p.m. The personnel claimed that they already have a 100% voter turnout. However, the transmission of votes only started at midnight. “What happened between 4 p.m. to 12 midnight, nobody knows,” said Ilagan. “It contradicts the principle of transparency,” she added.

In some regions of the country, voters found it hard to locate their precincts. Issues on the secrecy of their ballots were experienced, LENTE claimed. Citing what their volunteers witnessed in Regions V and VI, there were “more than 10 voters voting at the same time and ballot secrecy folders were not used.”

Since the electoral lapses are considered crimes against a person, Carintos explained that all they can do as an organization is offer their legal services to would-be complainants for free. “We need to have complainants to file the electoral cases. We will back you up and support you for free,” said Carintos. From 2010 to 2013, LENTE only handled one election case. It is a case against Camiguin Governor Jurdin Jesus Romualdo. “Katatapos lang ng presentation ng prosecution. It’s now the time for the defense to present,” Carintos said adding that the slow pace of electoral case trials have also been instrumental for the complainant to lose interest in pursuing the complaints. Still, Carintos appealed to those who have witnessed electoral lapses to file their complaints.

Complaints, says Aman, should be viewed by the Comelec as constructive. “Hindi po ibig sabihin na yinuyurakan, sinisisi at gusto na naming mag-resign si Chairman (Sixto) Brillantes. Hindi po tao, kundi ang sistema po,” clarified Aman. LENTE lawyers admitted that they were disappointed with the incident reports and Comelec’s lack of contingency planning. But Aman added that the commissioners are not the only ones to be held accountable for the lapses in the election, but the election officers as well.

“They are the ones directly involved. So sila din dapat nating i-held [sic] accountable.”

LENTE officials also presented a list of recommendations to prevent the same problems in the 2016 elections. These include training of BEIs (Board of Election Inspectors), support staff and technical personnel and a specialized sensitivity training for vulnerable sectors. Second, there should be custody and security of the PCOS (Precinct Count Optical Scan) machines and all election paraphernalia. This is to address reports on pre-shaded and oversized ballots. Third, there should be a mandatory biometrics so that the Posted Computerized Voters’ List is in consonance with the Election Day Computerized Voters’ List. Fourth, there should be effective and timely remedies to safeguard electorates’ right to vote. Fifth, is for Comelec to reveal the areas where the PCOS failed to transmit. And lastly, there should be a timely release of the source code review.

The newly elected senators, and district and party-list representatives, will convene in July as members of the 16th Congress.

Four re-electionist senators from the 15th, by the latest count of votes, are likely to keep their seats in the 16th. Twelve other senators will serve on until 2016. Just a handful of neophytes will likely be added to the roster of the senators of the 16th.

This early, it would do well for people to know and to fix the baseline data on the wealth of those who will serve in the Senate.

Both the neophytes and the re-elected senators, like all incoming elective officials of the land, are required by law to file their “entry into office” SALN or Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth by June 30.

To be sure, the Senate has always been a millionaires’ club.

Political party lines aside, the 23 senators of the 15th Congress are a lot alike in truth.

Financial comfort and steadily rising net worth are two blessings they share, according to the SALNs that they had filed over the years.

Some were born to old money, others had lucrative careers before politics beckoned, and a few own big business enterprises. To the last almost, wealth is the 23 senators’ common bliss.

Check out our latest report on The Wealth of the Senators of the 15th Congress in MoneyPolitics Online.

To know the wealth profiles of all 33 candidates for senator, read:

* THE RE-ELECTIONIST SENATORS:
SALNS bare some, mask other details
* Sidebar:
Wealth + donors + clans = power base

THE HOUSE’S WANNA-BE SENATORS:
* Propped by rich clans, big donors
* Sidebar:
Sons & daughters

* THE WANNA-BE SENATORS AGAIN:
No paupers despite break from politics

* The WANNA-BE SENATORS, TOO:
Family wealth, spouses’ assets boost a few newbies

And that, at least, is one aspect of democracy in action.