NEW BILIBID PRISON, Muntinlupa City — For the first time, inmates at the national penitentiary will be allowed to vote in the May 13 elections.
Of the 22,000 inmates at New Bilibid Prison, 2,322 have registered to vote in the mid-term elections—2,065 from the maximum security compound, and 257 from the medium security camp, NBP superintendent Fajardo Lansangan said in a recent interview.
While convicts lose their right to vote, the inmates who registered last year for the upcoming elections have not been finally convicted as their cases are on appeal so they are still qualified to vote, explained Bureau of Corrections director Franklin Jesus Bucayu.
“The decision [on their respective case] is not final yet because they have been appealed. They have a right to vote if they appealed within 10 to 15 days of their conviction,” Bucayu said, adding that most of the NBP voters have been committed to the prison only recently.
Commission on Elections Resolution No. 9371 specifying the rules on detainee registration and voting, specifies that detainees entitled to vote are those “confined in jail, formally charged for any crime and awaiting trial; those serving a sentence of imprisonment for less than one year; or those whose conviction of a crime involving disloyalty to the duly constituted government such as rebellion, sedition, violation of the firearms laws or any crime against national security or for any other crime, is on appeal.”
Local candidates have already campaigned inside the NBP, such as the Liberal Party’s re-electionist congressman Rodolfo Biazon. “2,000 votes is something, especially for local bets,” said Bucayu.
The NBP special polling place will be located at the BuCor administration building, which also serves as the entrance to the maximum security compound.
As with special polling places in jails during the 2010 elections, the ballots will be delivered to the prison facility on election day.
Once filled out, they will be sent back to a regular polling precinct to be processed through the precinct count optical scan machine—in Muntinlupa City, in the case of the NBP.
There will be 21 desks in the NBP polling precinct, each manned by a member of the Special Board of Election Inspectors and four Comelec personnel, said Lansangan.
Inmates will be escorted out of their cells in batches by the Bilibid Reservation Security Service, and will be placed in a holding area, also in the administration building, while they wait for their turn to vote.
Detainees with special needs or are illiterate will be assisted by proctors, who could be either teachers or Comelec personnel.
A dry-run of the conduct of the first special balloting in the NBP is being prepared by prison officials and the Comelec.
The special polling place is a first at the NBP. It also makes the NBP the first BuCor-run prison to host a special voting precinct, Bucayu said.
The BuCor administers seven penal facilities nationwide.
The first detainee voting in the 2010 election applied only to local jails, or facilities run by the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, because only detainees with unresolved cases are allowed to vote.
With Alex Austria, Journalism Intern