CenPEG Senior Fellow Temario C. Rivera says that even if election automation is “the way to go forward” in Philippine elections it will not necessarily address the traditional forms of electoral fraud such as vote buying and compromised voters’ registration lists.
Rivera made this warning in a talk on “Electoral fraud: Structural and institutional issues,” at the third “Talakayang Makabayan” (discussion on nationalism), August 11 this year.
Citing a study (Schaffer 2007), Rivera, who is also a professor at the International Christian University in Tokyo, said poor voters are vulnerable to offers of cash or material resources, fear of retaliation, feelings of personal obligation (“utang na loob”) to the vote brokers, and to belief that “vote buying is a sign of virtue that the candidate cares.”
“Because it subverts our institutions and works primarily against the interests of the poor and the disempowered in our society, electoral fraud must be addressed decisively. But being driven by both structural and institutional causes, we must all be prepared to do our share in stopping it,” Rivera said.
One critical institutional response lies in reforming the Commission on Elections (Comelec), he said. The key election institution has long suffered from “externally-motivated clientelistic relation” where a patron seeks the support of a client from within the Comelec, Rivera said. Yet another problem, he said, is within the Comelec itself: The patron is inside the bureaucracy and the clients occupy subordinate positions within the same agency. Another problem that needs to be addressed is the institution’s organizational inefficiency and lack of capacity, he added.
Speakers at the roundtable discussion held at Club Filipino, Greenhills included Comelec Chair Sixto Brillantes, Sens. Francis “Chiz” Escudero and Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III, and Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Javier Colmenares. Also at the panel were Maita Gomez of Makabayan and Grace Poe-Llamanzares, chair of MTRCB.
The series of roundtable discussions is sponsored by the coalition Makabayan. CenPEG News
Talakayang Makabayan roundtable on policy reforms
CenPEG Fellow Temario Rivera (CenPEG photo)