Special ARMM voter registration still possible, says Comelec head

COTABATO CITY, Philippines—The Commission on Elections is not closing the door yet on the possibility of holding a special registration of voters in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao following the conclusion last Wednesday of a 10-day general registration of voters in the region, Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes said Thursday.

“We will have our en banc session on Tuesday (July 24) to decide on whether or not to grant requests for special list-up; we are not closing the door yet,” Brillantes told a local radio station here by phone.

Brillantes said there may actually be ARMM voters living outside the region who were not able to register.

“(But) we have to determine the final list of voters after the 10-day registration and determine how many are outside ARMM  who are qualified to register,” he said.

Brillantes said by Comelec’s assessment, the recently concluded general registration was orderly, despite isolated incidents of violence and illegal registrants.

“We did not challenge the suspicious applicants;  we simply marked if they are underage and we never challenged multiple registrants at the registration center  level so there would be no delay and no commotion,” Brillantes said.

He said the Comelec’s task now was to clear the new list of illegal registrants through the use of biometrics and other systems.

“We will know if they were multiple registrants or not,” he said.

As to minors who were allowed to fill up registration forms, Brillantes said their forms had “notes.”

“We will use them as evidence in the delisting process,” he said.

He said up to this point, those who filled up registration documents were merely applicants.

“They will only be considered as registered voters once we finish the delisting process, maybe in the next two months,” Brillantes added.

Citing initial reports, Brillantes said the ARMM book of voters will contain about 1.2 to 1.3 million names, way below the old list, which held 1.7 million names.

Henrietta de Villa, national chair of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting, said the Comelec should make public the number of applicants rejected for being minor or for being flying voters.

“This is to disabuse public perception that underage registrants continue to pollute the new list of voters in the ARMM, now in even bigger numbers than before, debunking the objective of the general registration as a significant electoral reform,” she said in a letter to Brillantes, a copy of which was obtained by reporters here.

De Villa said the PPCRV suggestion was also meant to help the public realize that the Comelec is a credible and competent manager of elections and would help restore the peoples’ trust in elections and impel participation in good governance.

“Your credibility is vital for us since we adhere to the truth that the credibility of elections in the Philippines depends, to a large extent, on the credibility of the men and women mandated by the Constitution to manage these – the Comelec,” she said.