WHAT CLEAN ELECTIONS?
I wonder which planet did the COMELEC and the PNP spend the election period in? The cleanest? Give me a break…
Even my own experience as a simple pollwatcher last Monday disproved that this was a clean and peaceful elections. In one precint in Sauyo High School (where I was assigned by Task Force Poll Watchers), the marks on the tally sheet indicated Bayan Muna got 5 votes, but they listed it as FOUR. I sarcastically asked the teacher how much votes where there and they said FOUR. Either they were stupid criminals, or talagang makapal ang mukha. In another, the 2nd tally sheet for partylist votes was missing while they even had an excess of the other tally sheets. According to the teacher, the COMELEC refused to listen to their requests for that certain tally sheet.
Which brings me to my next point as a simple pollwatcher. Is NAMFREL and PPCRV really up to the task? When i told some of their volunteers about such irregularities, they simply shrugged it off. I don’t want to accuse them of conniving with government cheaters, but that would only mean that they are INCOMPETENT.
Thankfully though, they reported the incident when several policemen barged into the polling center, in clear violation of the Election Law. They took pictures of the policement. But those were glaring violations. How about the subtle violations?
Correction. They didnt notice the most glaring violation of all: Chuck Mathay, a member of KAMPI (GMA’s party), gave his pollwatchers fake Liberal Party (the accredited opposition party) IDs. With those IDs, the KAMPI people took the election return copies that were intended for the Opposition. It didn’t just happen in my precint. It happened in almost all polling centers in the 2nd District of Q.C.
We then go to the news. My observation of shaving one vote from Bayan Muna is obviously not an isolated incident. When I checked my Friendster, i read one post from a pollwatcher in the Manila area that KABATAAN votes were being counted for ANAK partylist. Is it any coincidence that this is one of the partylists funded by the Office for External Affairs? And when I read the papers this morning, I took note of an article detailing how Suara Bangsamoro got 4,000 votes from one precint, and how it was halved by the Comelec during the municipal canvassing. Or how the 200 votes ANAKPAWIS got in a precint in Samar was counted as ZERO during the municipal counting.
One such case in Pampanga was averted by the watchful eyes of Fr. Ed Panlilio’s pollwatchers. I guess I have to thank God for that, hehe.
And I am not even mentioning the harrasment of such partylists, that stretched from the morning of May 14 to several years back.
Pollwatchers in Baesa, Q.C reported that streamers proclaiming "IBOTO ANG MAKA-DIYOS. ANG KOMUNISMO AY SATANISMO. HUWAG IBOTO ANG BAYAN MUNA, ANAKPAWIS, GABRIELA, KABATAAN at SUARA" were posted in many polling centers. Leaflets containing the same message were scattered all over. And this same incident was reported in many other places in the country: Nueva Ecija, Camarines Sur and Norte, Sorsogon, Samar, Quezon. Noteworthy is the fact that the message was exactly the same. Obviously, only one group is the mastermind behind this. A group which has a national scope in terms of membership, has sufficient resources, and has a glaring grudge against the 5 partylist groups.
I wonder who can they be?
Its the same group that used the threat of violence to intimdate voters into voting for Dato Arroyo, Gloria’s son who is running in Camarines as congressman.
Its the same group that was discovered by the International Observers’ Mission to have campaigned for Bantay partylist so forcefully and threateningly that in one case, in Nueva Ecija, people thought only one partylist was running this elections.
Its the same group who has pronounced that Bayan Muna and Company are communist fronts, thus proclaiming them legal targets of military operations.
Its the same group, whose pronouncements above, have made them the #1 suspect in the more than 800 extra-judicial killings in our country since 2001.
And finally, its the same group that has been quoted by many writers, from Conrado De Quiros to Raul Pagdanganan, as the only thing keeping Gloria in power.
Clean elections? Give me a break.
