BY LISA ITO
BULATLAT
ELECTION WATCH/BREAKING NEWS
May 14, 2007 – 4:01 p.m.

On the ground, foreign delegates from the Peoples’ International Observers Mission (Peoples’ IOM) today witnessed election violations and documented hundreds of disenfranchised voters in precincts throughout Tondo and Makati City in Metro Manila.

Stefan Christoff, a journalist from Canada, together with Yan Naing of Myanmar and Bianca Miglioretto of Switzerland this morning went the rounds of voting precincts in District 1 of Tondo, Manila, which has the largest voting population in the area.

Disregard of the law

Christoff’s team witnessed the distribution of multiple ‘sample ballots’ to voters at the polling centers at the Isabelo de los Reyes School and Rosario Almario School in District 1, Tondo.

“In disregard of national election law, multiple candidate supporters were distributing ‘sample ballots’ within the voting centers, just in front of each entrance or door to the voting centers,” Christoff said.

It was clear to the IOM Manila team that the ‘poll watchers’ were vocally attempting to influence voters to cast their ballot for the candidate they supported, he added.

At the Rosario Almario School in Makati, Christoff interviewed supporters of Bayan Muna party list who discovered that their names disappeared from the voting lists, despite being registered voters of the same precincts during the 2004 elections.

Missing voters’ names

Christoff’s team also documented cases of voters from Isla Puting Bato and Parola communities whose names were similarly absent from the local voting lists. Multiple queues of voters who were not able to cast their ballots formed around the polling center, Christoff added.

Meanwhile, Miglioretto’s team listed 100 deactivated voters out of 439 registered voters at the Vicente Lim Elementary School in Makati.

At 10:30 a.m. today, foreign observers Freda Guttman from Canada and Wataru Arizumi from Japan witnessed a commotion caused by missing voters’ names at the Guadalupe Viejo Elementary School in Makati.

Guttman’s team talked with Evangeline Ibay, 29 years old, who voted in the same precinct in Viejo during the 2004 elections. Ibay discovered that her name and that of her husband, Rolando Ibay, were missing in the official list.

The team talked to Carmin Casabon, a volunteer for the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV).

Casabon said that the problem with voters’ missing names has been evident in the Viejo precinct since elections started at 7 a.m. today. There were no COMELEC volunteers or personnel to oversee the elections at Viejo, the team quoted Casabon as saying.

Carmin was disappointed that voters who did not find their names on the list had to go to Comelec to find the precincts where their names were placed to ensure that they could vote.

Casabon who was also a PPCRV volunteer in 2004 for the Viejo precinct, explained to the Makati team that this did not happen in the past elections.

Deceased voters still on the list

The Makati team also discovered that the name of a deceased woman appeared in the list, Guttman said.

A friend of the deceased, who refused to be named, narrated that she found the name of her neighbor, Mercy Obejas, who has been dead for two years to date, in the list of voters.

Ironically, their source failed to find her own name in the list.

“Buti pa yung patay, nakakaboto, yung buhay wala,” the source was quoted as saying.

The IOM Manila Team is currently conducting more interviews in Baseco and Parola in Tondo and will monitoring the canvassing at the Manila City Hall tomorrow.

The Makati team is currently observing four more Makati precincts at barangays Bangkal, PEMBO, Nuevo, and Rizal. (Bulatlat.com)

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