An anti-fraud watchdog and several militant groups have expressed concern over possible tampering of overseas Filipino workers’ (OFWs) votes.
BY AUBREY SC MAKILAN
Bulatlat
ELECTION WATCH
Vol. VII, No. 14 May 13-19, 2007
An anti-fraud watchdog and several militant groups have expressed concern over possible tampering of overseas Filipino workers’ (OFWs) votes through outsourcing the mailing of voting paraphernalia.
In an urgent letter to Philippine Postal Corporation (PPC) regional director Muara Baghari-Regis dated April 23, Commission on Elections (Comelec) Committee on Overseas Absentee Voting (COAV) chairman Florentino Tuason, Jr. said that his committee “shall process and dispatch all our Return to Sender (RTS) mails that will be serviced by private couriers, outside the OAV Mailing Center.”
Tuason also asked Regis to allow them “to vacate.the OAV Mailing Center not later than 30 April 2007.”
A copy of the letter was obtained through the Confederation for the Unity, Recognition and Advancement of Government Employees (Courage) and its Kawani Kontra Daya arm. The government employees’ union expressed the same worry that another election anomaly was allegedly in the works.
Open to tampering
With the COAV move, the anti-fraud group Kontra Daya is concerned over “the rigging of absentee votes through the COAV of the Commission on Elections (Comelec).”
Kontra Daya stated it received reports that of the 504,000 absentee voters, about 174,000 ballots were mailed to intended recipient voters. Of the total mailed ballots, about 80 percent or almost 140,000 ballots were marked “return to sender.”
Based on the group’s report, these 140,000 ballots being diverted through private couriers outside the OAV Mailing Center are open to tampering.
“There are two envelopes in the OAV by mail process, an inner and outer envelope,” said Maita Santiago, spokesperson pf the Migrants Watch Network against Electoral Fraud and Violence (MigrantsWatch.Net) which has coordinators in various countries including Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, Japan and Italy.
spokesperson. “To cheat, one only has to open the outer envelope and switch the inner envelope containing just the actual ballot – and leave behind the detached portion of the ballot with the thumb mark and the signature.”
The RTS mails are ballots sent to overseas absentee voters but were not received by the target voters. These RTS mails will now be delivered to the COAV Comelec office in Manila and resent to their intended recipients via private couriers, said Kontra Daya.
“If these ballots fell in the wrong hands, because of the so-called private couriers, then fraud can easily be committed,” Kontra Daya said in its statement, noting that the COAV “would have been an abettor of the crime because it exposed the ballots to tampering.”
Though relatively small, the group said that the alleged number of ballots diverted is significant especially in close fights for the last slots for senator.
Anomalies in the OAV
Voting by mail was expanded from three countries in 2004 to more than 60 countries this year’s elections.
Along with the political killing, repression and harassment of opposition groups, progressive party-lists and the people, Santiago said that the Arroyo regime has a “grand scheme” for electoral fraud and violence which allegedly includes the “outright manipulation of election results.”
“Thus, the tampering of OAV ballots is extremely plausible,” she said.
Tampering ballots, the mail containing the ballots for overseas absentee voters, the election returns – including its destruction, mutilation and manipulation – is an act prohibited under Republic Act No. 9189 or the Overseas Absentee Voting Act of 2003. Under the law, any person found guilty of committing any of the prohibited acts, shall be punished with imprisonment without probation. In addition, the guilty party shall be sentenced to suffer disqualification to hold public office and deprivation of the right of suffrage.
If the offender is an immigrant or permanent resident who did not resume residence in the Philippines as stipulated in his/her affidavit within three (3) years after the approval of his/her registration under the OAV Act and yet vote in the next succeeding elections, his or her name shall also be removed from the National Registry of Absentee Voters; he or she shall be permanently disqualified to vote in absentia; and his/her passport shall be stamped “not allowed to vote.”
