BOOK
REVIEW
Poll Fraud, the Massive
and Systematic Way
Fraud: Gloria M. Arroyo and the May 2004 Elections
Published by the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG)
447 pages
Alleged poll fraud has
been for the most part the main trigger behind major challenges to
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s regime in the last two years.A new
book from the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG) –
Fraud: Gloria M. Arroyo and the May 2004 Elections – should be
expected to make the specter loom more ominously over Arroyo’s head. It
shows just how massively and systematically the May 2004 presidential
election was waylaid.
BY ALEXANDER MARTIN
REMOLLINO
Bulatlat
The ghost of
alleged electoral fraud has not ceased to haunt President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
since 2004, when she was supposed to have won a fresh mandate three years
after being catapulted to power through a popular uprising. In fact
alleged poll fraud has been for the most part the main trigger behind
major challenges to her regime in the last two years.
A new book
from the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG) – Fraud:
Gloria M. Arroyo and the May 2004 Elections – should be expected to
make the specter loom more ominously over Arroyo’s head. It shows just how
massively and systematically the May 2004 presidential election was
waylaid.
Edited by
Bobby M. Tuazon, director of CenPEG’s Policy Study, Publication and
Advocacy (PSPA) program, the book features analyses by freelance writer
Rodolfo Desuasido, information technology expert Roberto Verzola, and
lawyer Cleto Villacorta – as well as major reports and documents from the
Citizens’ Congress for Truth and Accountability (CCTA), the
church-initiated poll monitor Patriots, and the minority members of the
Joint Committee of Congress.
“Fraud
does two exemplary things in addressing the continuing political crisis
provoked by the Arroyo administration: it brings together in a convenient
collection hitherto inaccessible major documents about the crisis and
situates the fraudulent 2004 elections in the context of deeper historical
and structural forces,” writes Temario C. Rivera, a professor of
comparative politics at the International Christian University in Tokyo
and a CenPEG board member, in his preface.
Desuasido’s
analysis, “Fraud in the May 2004 Elections,” gives a broad overview of how
the fraud was committed in what is perhaps the most hotly-contested
election in Philippine history. He shows it all: the reenactment of the
2003 budget, which according to Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr. gave Arroyo
some P100 billion in infrastructure funds to manipulate, the use of public
resources in election campaigns, controversial appointments before the
polls to strategic government posts; character assassination against actor
Fernando Poe Jr., Arroyo’s main opponent; disenfranchisement of voters,
manipulation of election results, canvassing railroad, and trending in the
electoral count.
The CCTA
report, among other things, shows how electoral fraud was committed
through various eyewitness accounts, affidavits, documents, and election
materials.
Verzola’s
two papers on the tally conducted by the National Citizens Movement for
Free Elections (Namfrel) show statistical improbabilities that cast doubt
on the poll monitoring body’s figures. The report by the minority members
of the Joint Committee of Congress centers on the tampering of election
documents and the discrepancies that arose as a result.
Patriots’
report focused on irregularities from the precinct to provincial levels,
voter disenfranchisement, partisan activities by the Armed Forces of the
Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) as well as
their violations of election procedure, and the terrorization of political
opponents and their supporters, voters and personnel.
Villacorta’s
article on the party-list system, “Has the Party List Law Broadened
Popular Participation in Governance?” is an incisive legal study on what
he describes as the limited effectiveness of a system supposedly intended
to expand representation for underrepresented sectors. His article “The
Commission of Fraud: Patronage Politics in the Commission on Elections”
meanwhile exposes the poll body’s historical lack of integrity and
independence.
All
together, the articles and documents in Fraud: Gloria M. Arroyo and the
May 2004 Elections give a total picture of how the controversial
presidential poll of two years ago was desecrated. The patterns are there,
the numbers are there – all pointing to a wholesale messing with the
people’s will. Bulatlat
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