Maguindanao list of voters dirty, governor tells Palace

DAVAO CITY—Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu has called on President Benigno Aquino to order the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to invalidate the entire list of voters in Maguindanao.

Mangudadatu recently told reporters here that invalidating the list of voters in the province would pave the way for a new registration of all voters in the province.

He said this would be the most appropriate solution to the perennial fraudulent election practices in the province, mostly employed with the use of ghost or flying voters, that were used to rig the results of the 2004 presidential elections and 2007 senatorial elections.

Maguindanao was among several Mindanao provinces which delivered a high number of votes for then presidential candidate Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Her closest rival, Fernando Poe Jr., who was very popular among Maguindanaons, got an insignificant number of votes.

In 2007, several senatorial candidates also got zero votes in the province, then ran by Maguindanao patriarch Andal Ampatuan Sr., a close Arroyo ally.

Former Maguindanao election supervisor Lintang Bedol had claimed that poll results in the province had been rigged.

“About 40 to 60 percent of the current number of registered voter registrants in the province are either ghost voters or double registrants,” Mangudadatu said.

He said it was worthless to just rant about the situation and that a radical move should be made.

“So I am challenging the P-Noy administration to (invalidate) all registrations and make a new one,” he said.

Mangudadatu said he had made his recommendation formal in a letter he recently submitted to Malacañang.

He said the cancellation of the entire voters’ list in Maguindanao would not disenfranchise legitimate voters because they can always participate in a general list up that the Comelec would have to conduct.

“They can still take part in the next elections,” Mangudadatu said.

He said based on a study, the general list up in the province, with an estimated 600,000 eligible voters, would cost about P25 million.

Mangudadatu said the fund could be drawn from the P1.6 billion set aside for the stalled regional elections in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Judy Quiros, Inquirer Mindanao