Comelec hit for insisting on ARMM elections

DAVAO CITY, Philippines—A civil-society group has criticized the Commission on Elections for insisting on the holding of elections in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao as scheduled in August.

The Reform ARMM Now! (RAN) said the Comelec should instead agree to the proposal to reset the elections to 2013.

Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes said earlier that in the absence of a law putting off the ARMM elections, the poll body had no choice but to hold the elections for which it had prepared a budget of P2.2 billion to computerize the balloting and vote counting.

Salic Ibrahim, RAN convenor, said using computers would never ensure fraud-free elections in the region.

“In previous years, we had elections using these machines but it did not solve the problem of massive fraud and cheating in the region,” Salic told reporters here Wednesday.

Tom Villarin, another convenor of RAN, said that with only a few months to go, the Comelec was running out of time and could not ensure that the elections in the ARMM will be “fair and free from fraud.”

“We are wondering why the Comelec insists on conducting the elections in August,” he said.

Villarin said they were also wondering why the Comelec wanted P2.2 billion for the elections.

He said the poll body should instead agree to postpone the elections and use the time to cleanse the voters’ list.

He said that postponing the elections to 2013 was the only assurance that genuine reforms could be done in ARMM.

For Maguindanao Governor Esmael Magudadatu, the postponement would provide the government an opportunity to revisit the peace agreement it signed with the Moro National Liberation Front in 1996.

“With the ample time, we hope that we can subsequently come up with the full implementation of the provisions of the agreement which aims to promote welfare, development and common good,” he said.

The postponement, he said, would lead to huge savings to defray the costs of genuine electoral reforms. The savings, he said, will be diverted and used to fund other more important projects of the government.