Media on Elections and Violence 2016

A Report of the Center for Media Freedom & Responsibility

gfx-erv2

The coverage of violence and conflict in media presents the subject as a critical concern about the role of the press in society and its impact on development. Violence is endemic, criminal and embedded in various aspects of national life.

A gun culture perpetrates this violence, giving rise to an incidence that should not be tolerated by civilized society.

Focusing on the election related violence, this study examines the quality of the political exercise in a different light, concerned not with the security of electoral procedures as much as the security of the stakeholders of the exercise. This concern draws us to regional conditions that are under-reported by the media — the poverty, the lack of public services, of health and education for so many communities in remote areas which underline severe social inequalities in the country. The state of such deprivation makes these citizens vulnerable to attacks and threats, intimidation, harassment and other dangers. These may not prevent the holding of elections, but it raises questions about the freedom of the people’s choice.

In monitoring the coverage of violence in the 2016 elections, CMFR assigned regional team leaders in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, the latter concentrating on ARMM. As journalists, these were engaged as well in covering elections for their news organizations, while evaluating media reports about violent incidents in the course of the campaign up to election week.

The limited study recorded the highest incidence of electoral violence in the provinces of ARMM in Mindanao, in Samar in the Visayas, and Abra in the Cordilleras. These incidents were reported as incidents without reference to the context of conflict in these communities.

The study shows a limited scope of coverage given to regional news by national newspapers. Monitoring teams have also noted that media reports mainly relied on police and military records to describe the violence, circumstances and identity of casualties. Lacking context in reports, the press fails to draw policy attention to the underlying issues of conflict.

Read CMFR’s full report here.

 

Duterte’s war: CHR mounts probeof 103 drug killings and counting

By Karol Ilagan
Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism

ON TOP of Bayani Arago’s desk at the Commission on Human Rights National Capital Region (CHR NCR) is a pile of clippings now about an inch thick. The news reports, which Arago began collecting last July 1, tell stories of various police encounters that almost always end up with the same outcome: a drug suspect dead.

“Ito ang mabigat (This is tough),” he says. “Every day, I look at newspapers, and that’s all I see. On Saturdays and Sundays, that’s what I read. So many are getting killed and the only thing I see are killings.”

The bodies are piling up as an apparent result of President Rodrigo R. Duterte’s anti-drug campaign, and Arago, officer-in-charge of CHR NCR’s Protection and Monitoring Division, has made it his duty to keep track of the dead.

So far, he has identified at least 33 incidents related to the campaign that will be investigated motu propio or on the commission’s own initiative. In addition, CHR NCR has assigned priority to its investigation of six complaints filed by the surviving kin of those who had been killed.

The Commission on Human Rights, an independent office created by the Constitution, is the national human rights institution of the Philippines.

Since its formation in 1987, the CHR has investigated human-rights violations involving civil and political rights. It had investigated the 2007 enforced disappearance of activist Jonas Burgos. In 2009, it looked into the summary killings associated with the Davao Death Squad linked to then Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte. More recently, CHR launched one of the first human-rights investigations into the accountability of companies for the adverse impacts of climate change.

A multitude of cases involving crime and security, and women and children has kept the Commission constantly occupied. But the unusually high number of drug deaths since Duterte assumed the presidency three weeks ago is now making CHR work double – perhaps even triple – time to accomplish its tasks.

At CHR NCR, for instance, investigators typically work in teams specific to cases like rubout, torture, and unlawful arrest. These days, majority of the office’s 20 investigators are looking into the extrajudicial killings spawned by Duterte’s war against drugs.

Swamped with work

“Actually, our investigators are now almost working 24/7,” says CHR Commissioner Leah Armamento. “They cannot finish their reports quickly because there’s so much to do.”

Across the country, many of CHR’s regional offices have also shifted their attention on possible human-rights violations in the course of the new administration’s anti-drug campaign. In addition, CHR has formed a national task force specific to extrajudicial killings, which it expects to rise in number.

But apart from issuing statements and making recommendations, there may be little that CHR can do to ensure that justice is being served and the rights of the suspects respected. Already burdened with all sorts of handicaps, including limited resources, it had even managed to irritate Duterte himself early on, prompting him to call CHR Chairman Jose Luis Martin ‘Chito’ Gascon an “idiot.”

In his June 30 inaugural speech, President Duterte also pointedly asked Congress and CHR “to allow us a level of governance that is consistent to our mandate.” He said that as a lawyer and a former prosecutor, he knows the limits of his authority as president and what is legal and what is not.

Maim, not kill

The way Duterte’s war on drugs has unfolded, however, has raised questions on whether due process and fair trial are accorded suspected drug criminals, among other things. Armamento for one says that police officials are supposed to follow standard procedures such as reading a suspect his or her Miranda rights, which include the right to remain silent, right to counsel, and the right to be informed. Likewise, in the event that a suspect poses threat, officers are instructed to maim or render him or her defenseless – but still breathing.

“Hindi mo siya tinatamaan sa ulo, which is fatal, o sa puso (You don’t shoot them in the head or chest, which is fatal),” says Armamento, “You don’t kill them because you have to surrender them to the court and then serve justice.”

What’s alarming for the CHR commissioner is that the police appear to be acting like “eager beavers,” wanting to prove to Duterte that they can comply with his directive to rid the streets of criminals.

“None in our legal system allows killing,” she says.

5 regions, 103 cases

The CHR Task Force created to investigate cases of extrajudicial killings is still collecting data from all the regions. But as of July 25, the regional offices of CHR in NCR, Region I (Ilocos Region), Region II (Cagayan Valley), Cordillera Administrative Region, and Region XII (Soccsksargen) are already investigating or reviewing at least 103 such cases.

The total includes 39 cases in NCR; 27 cases in Region I; 15 cases in Region II; 13 cases in the Cordillera Administrative Region; and nine cases in Region XII.

These numbers include cases where the suspect was killed in a police operation, or by an unidentified assailant.

Of the six regional CHR offices PCIJ called on July 22 and July 25, only NCR had a good number of walk-in complainants. CAR, Region I, Region II, Region IV, and Region XII are mostly, if not only, working on motu propio cases or cases that CHR has decided to pursue on its own.

Whether or not there is a complaint, the CHR is constitutionally mandated to “investigate, on its own or on complaint by any party, all forms of human rights violations involving civil and political rights.” Obviously, though, having a formal complaint helps in building a case. Without someone who has direct knowledge about the case, an investigator would have to start from scratch to get details about the case, as well as leads and pieces of evidence.

Indigents mostly

In Region XII, CHR Officer in Charge Erlan Deluvio says they do not typically receive walk-ins because families of most rights victims are indigents. They wouldn’t have the money to spare for travel to visit their office, he says. All the nine cases CHR Region XII is investigating that are connected to the current administration’s war on drugs are motu propio.

Most of the 13 similar cases under CHR CAR are also motu propio investigations. According to CHR CAR Officer in Charge Romel Daguimol, people in Cordillera are not so inclined to pursue cases because it’s not in their culture to make complaints.

For Director Jacqueline dela Peña of CHR Region IV, personal complaints also depend on how determined the surviving kin is to seek redress from government. She says it depends on the character of the individual, as well as the support he or she gets from the community.

Dela Peña says, however, that they may not receive walk-in complaints arising from the recent spate of killings of drug suspects until after the families of the dead have taken time to grieve.

Deluvio of CHR Region XII says they reach out to the victims’ families and motivate them to participate in the process. Not all would cooperate, however. Some who might consider pursuing a case also change their minds because, Deluvio says, they are also easily intimidated by opposing parties.

Limited resources

It doesn’t also help when law enforcement is uncooperative. Police reports are part and parcel of any investigation, but CHR investigators find it hard to get such records in cases involving the police themselves. This would then mean CHR would have to do more spadework, but like most government offices, this is a body operating on limited resources.

The good news is that starting in 2015, CHR has been getting funds more than what it proposes in the annual budget. For the year 2016, it sought a budget of P428.5 million, and then received P460 million.

Still, among the nation’s five constitutional agencies, CHR has the smallest number of staff. In 2015, it had positions open for 680 but only 526 were filled.

“Kung noon nga, kulang na, lalo na ngayon (The resources were already not enough before, but the lack is even more so now),” Deluvio of CHR Region XII says. CHR Region XII itself has only seven active investigators and two vehicles. An investigator could be working on 12 cases at least at a time, and carpooling has become the norm whenever fieldwork is called for.

In Region IV, where the number of drug-related killings is on the high side, the CHR regional office also has only seven investigators. These investigators cover Laguna, Batangas, Quezon, and the whole of MIMAROPA.

No CHR charter

CHR Region IV Director Dela Peña says they are trying their best to respond to needs, but the influx of cases really makes the job harder. She says the passage of the CHR’s charter, which could pave the way for more resources and personnel, is crucial.

The proposed CHR charter aims to strengthen the Commission’s investigative powers and expand its quasi-judicial powers that include preventive and legal measures such as the issuance of an injuction order, order to transfer persons, and restraining order. But in the last several years, attempts to form this charter have failed in Congress.

Armamento says the drug-related killings has spurred CHR in coordinating with various law groups to help it in any way they can. Among these law groups are the Free Legal Assistance Group, Mabini, and the Philippine Association of Law Schools. CHR has also reached out to the Integrated Bar of the Philippines.

Apart from additional funding, Armamento says the president can also help by stressing the importance of respect for law, human rights, and that no extrajudicial killing should take place during police operations.

“That will help a lot because police officers being part of the executive branch will always obey the president,” she says.

Davao Death Squad

It is still too early to say what will become of CHR’s efforts to respond to the rise of killings of drug suspects. But the results of its investigation into the summary killings in Davao City some seven years ago could be some indication on what could happen next.

The CHR investigation in 2009 had been prompted by a growing concern, inside and outside the country, over the numerous dead bodies turning up across Davao City that time.

The Commission found “a systematic failure on the part of the local officials to conduct any meaningful investigation into said killings, thereby violating the State’s obligation to protect the rights of its citizens.” CHR thus recommended the Office of the Ombudsman to investigate “the possible administrative and criminal liability of Mayor Duterte for his inaction in the face of evidence of numerous killings committed in Davao City and his toleration of the commission of those offenses.”

In March 2012, the Ombudsman found 21 police officers — but not Duterte — guilty of simple neglect of duty. The officers faced penalties ranging from one-month suspension to a fine equal to a month’s salary.

In May 2016, the sole witness in the Department of Justice’s subsequent investigation into the Davao Death Squad left the government’s witness protection program, putting a halt into the probe. In the same month, Duterte won the presidency. — With additional reporting by Davinci Maru, PCIJ, July 2016

Duterte’s war: Big kill of small fry, puny drugs haul, defies PNP rules

BANGKAY SA BANGKETA… kasi nga drug pusher ako.

This is the sad refrain in a sardonic poem that a young Filipina wrote and read in a video she posted last week on her Facebook page. It does not matter, she averred, that the so-called drug pushers falling by the dozens of late had not been read their rights or tried in court. Or even, that they had been killed by those who are supposed to protect them and enforce the law. Perhaps, she wrote, those who kill are drug pushers, too.

Indeed, a pall of death has cloaked the nation in mixed glee, grief, confusion, and anxiety in the first three weeks alone of the war on drugs of President Rodrigo R. Duterte, who will deliver his first state of the nation address today.

But who will be killed next is not quite clear as yet. In the meantime, the question of why the poor and puny pushers are dying in high numbers compared to just a handful of their rich counterparts, the drug lords, and their supposed coddlers in the police has been either inadequately answered or ignored.

By the data of the police — until now the singular source of information of the news media about the war on drugs — about 10 bodies have been showing up by the road and in the slums every day, or a total of 213 killed in Duterte’s first 21 days in office alone. The casualty toll includes 209 civilians and only four policemen that the police had tagged as alleged drug pushers.

Combatting drugs has always been a major police activity over the last seven years. Then and now, however, the PNP’s reports on the supposed “achievements” of the campaign have risen and fallen, across regions of the country.

By official PNP reports, Duterte’s war on drugs has netted much bigger numbers of those killed and arrested in its initial rollout period but also smaller seizures of drugs, by value and volume.

By all indications, however, Duterte’s war has assumed a random, free-for-all, brook-no-limits in law and due process, a kill-at-will campaign against mostly small-time drug suspects. This is happening despite the explicit rules of the 200-page Philippine National Police Handbook PNPM-Do-Ds-3-2-13 or Revised PNP Manual on Operational Procedures published in December 2013.

Cookie Diokno of the Free Legal Assistance Group of human rights lawyers says the big difference in the war on drugs then and now is this: Duterte’s war has flipped the “burden of proof” principle in the statutes inside out. In other words, says Diokno, “you are now presumed guilty, until proven innocent.”

Compared with data on the PNP’s anti-drug campaign in the 78 months from January 2010 to June 2016, Duterte’s three-week-old war has upped the numbers of alleged drug users and pushers killed and arrested multiple-fold.

The downside is Duterte’s war is unfolding with negligible documentation of the conduct of police operations and the death of suspects. In a majority of cases, the suspects were killed purportedly because they “resisted arrest” or tried to snatch the guns of and engaged arresting officers in a firefight.

Data from PNP’s Anti-Illegal Drugs Group (AIDG) in the 78 months before Duterte came to power, showed much lower numbers of casualties and arrests made, but also bigger values and volumes of drugs seized, compared to that recorded in the new government’s three-week war.

The 213 drug suspects killed under Duterte’s war from Jully 1 to 21, 2016 (an average of 10 persons a day) is a macabre figure compared to the 256 persons “killed in action” in the 78-month period or 2,336 days from January 2010 to June 2016 (an average of about one person every 10 days).

In the 78 months before Duterte, the PNP had conducted a total of 96,530 anti-drug operations, of which 46 percent were buy-bust operations; 28.4 percent “in flagrante” (the suspects were caught in the act); 16.1 percent via search warrant; 4.6 percent as checkpoint operations; 2.5 percent as “saturation drive”; 1.7 percent as “marijuana eradication” operations; 0.6 percent as “warrant of arrest”; and 0.1 percent as “interdiction.”

The PNP’s reports on Oplan Tokhang, though, do not offer data on how many of the various types of operations against illegal drugs have been conducted with mission orders, and which of these have been covered by search warrants or warrants of arrest. Many data fields in the PNP’s reports on the war on drugs prior to the Duterte administration do not appear anymore in its recent reports.

Yet another story should also raise grave concern among citizens. What drugs and substances, indeed, should be considered illegal?

Of the various types of drugs that the police had confiscated, over-the-counter substances and laboratory chemicals with legitimate but controlled uses have been enrolled, too. These include marijuana resin oil, rugby, Cytotec, ketamine, “Sulfuric,” sodium hydroxide, acetone, chloroform, palladium chloride, hydrochloric acid, Pseudoephedrine and Diazepam.

While most of the seized substances and drugs can only be bought in the black market, some items like hydrochloric acid (also known as muriatic acid), rugby, and acetone are easily available in sari-sari stores and hardware stores and are not on the list of illegal substances. Chemicals like chloroform and toluene are being used in research and industrial laboratories.— PCIJ, July 2016

Steer clear of bad Aquino policies, environment groups urge Duterte

By Karol Ilagan

Conference

UNITED FOR THE ENVIRONMENT. Students and environmental activists held placards with calls for change in environment policies addressed to President Rodrigo R. Duterte. Photo by Karol Ilagan/PCIJ

FRANCES Quimpo’s recollection of the country’s worst tragedies under a parade of Philippine presidents past reveals a singular pattern — death, devastation, and a dearth of lessons learned.

More than 200 people died when mounds of garbage at the Payatas dumpsite in Quezon City collapsed. Triggered by a typhoon, the landslide took place six months before Joseph Estrada’s ouster from Malacañang in January 2001.

During Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s nine-year presidency, a string of typhoons — Frank, Ondoy, and Pepeng, to name a few — flooded many parts of the country, taking hundreds of lives and damaging billions worth of properties. It was also under Arroyo when the government’s flagship mining project in Rapu-Rapu, Albay spewed out cyanide into the sea, causing massive fish kills.

Quimpo, executive director of the Center for Environmental Concerns-Philippines (CEC), said these disasters should have served Arroyo’s successor, Benigno S. Aquino III, important lessons. The political and economic policies that previous governments had pushed, she said, had put the environment at risk, and aggravated the impact of natural hazards in what was by then the climate-vulnerable state of the Philippines.

But in the next six years as president, Aquino saw the issuance of executive orders, which according to environmental advocates, did little to address the problems they were meant to solve. On top of these new policies are old laws that are either problematic to begin with or not enforced properly.

Frances Quimpo

A TRAIL OF DISASTERS. CEC Executive Director Frances Quimpo gives a rundown of calamities that had visited the nation since former President Joseph Estrada’s term.Photo by Karol Ilagan/PCIJ

Gathered at a forum Monday afternoon, environmental groups thus urged President Rodrigo R. Duterte to steer clear of the programs and policies of his predecessors that run counter to the protection of communities and natural resources.

Presenting CEC’s annual “State of the Philippine Environment” report, Owen Migraso, CEC coordinator for the Eastern Visayas Yolanda Recovery Program, said the Aquino government issued Industrial Forest Management Agreements in Northern Mindanao, Davao Region, and CARAGA, which were all recently hit by disasters. Multiple mining tenements have also been located on Luzon island, which hosts the greatest concentration of unique mammals.

Migraso cited Aquino’s Executive Order No. 23 on logging, Executive Order No. 26 or the National Greening Program, and Executive Order No. 79 on mining as problematic. These orders, he said, have turned forests and other resources into commodities at the expense of the lives and livelihood of poor and vulnerable communities.

The forum, co-organized by the CEC, Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment (Kalikasan PNE), and Eco-Challenge for Change coalition, also served as a venue to discuss the environmental challenges that the groups want Duterte to address.

Secretary Gina Lopez of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) was invited to speak at the forum but she failed to show up.

Clemente Bautista, Kalikasan PNE’s national coordinator, said that so far, their groups have not seen any actions from Duterte that would run against their environmental agenda; they have not also heard, however, of any pronouncements or seen any significant moves that would signal changes in the Aquino administration’s policies.
Clemente Bautista

IS CHANGE COMING? Kalikasan PNE National Coordinator Clemente Bautista posed this question to forum attendees on July 18. Photo by Karol Ilagan/PCIJ

A week before Duterte took his oath of office last June 30, the “Eco-Challenge for Change”, a coalition of environmental groups, including CEC and Kalikasan PNE, presented its 14-point agenda for the president to act on.

Signed by 41 groups, the coalition’s list of demands includes stopping illegal large-scale mining in environmentally critical areas and imposing a moratorium on the new construction and expansion of coal-fired power plants.

“Ang nakikita namin ngayon ay ang mahigpit na implementation ng mga environmental guidelines, pag-pepenalize ng mga violating private entities, at mga pangako na magkakaroon ng mabuting komunikasyon sa pagitan ng mga komunidad at mga organizations na tulad namin,” Bautista said. (What we are seeing now is strict implementation of environmental guidelines, penalizing of violating private entities, and promises that there will be good communication systems between communities and organizations like ours).

Since Lopez assumed leadership of DENR, work in at least four mining operations has been suspended. The department has likewise conducted an audit of mining activities.

Bautista said the coalition should be able to give a more thorough assessment of the Duterte administration after 100 days. “Sa ngayon, binibigyan namin sila ng puwang para patunayan ang kanilang tindig para sa kalikasan,” he said. (For now, we are giving them the chance to prove their stand for the environment)

While Duterte has shown a track record favoring environmental protection, the groups are also well aware of the former mayor’s support for the construction of a coal power plant and the establishment of palm oil plantations in Davao City.

On Monday, Duterte said he would not honor the Paris climate agreement, laying blame on developed countries for their bigger role in climate change. Signed by 178 countries, the historic deal is an effort to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius by reducing carbon emissions.

Bautista said Duterte was right to demand greater responsibility from developed countries but that they hope, too, that the president would not support the expansion of coal-fired power plants as this would be counter-productive.

“Our renewable and indigenous energy resources such as hydro, geothermal, solar, and natural gas are more than enough to provide our energy needs now and in the future,” he said in a statement.

Environmental sociologist Patria Gwen M.L. Borcena, meanwhile, said DENR needs a “reform team” composed of members from civil society and the academe who will occupy key positions and help Secretary Lopez.

This, Borcena said, is another lesson that should be learned from the previous administration. To be fair, she said an environment agenda was included in Aquino’s “A Social Contract with the Filipino People” and later as one chapter in the 2011-2016 Philippine Development Plan. This, she said, was the first time for the country’s development plan to have an entire chapter devoted to environment and natural resources.

Borcena said the execution of these plans did not run well in large measure because DENR did not have a reform team. Former DENR Secretary Ramon Paje and his leadership team, she said, came from the bureaucracy.

Prior to his appointment in 2010, Paje was DENR undersecretary for field operations and executive director of the Minerals Development Council under the Office of the President.

Moreover, Borcena said DENR would benefit from promoting “participatory environmental governance at all levels,” which was absent during Paje’s term. This setup could help ensure a partnership between civil society organizations and DENR.

“It shouldn’t just be token partnership. It should be institutionalized,” she said.

Borcena is a co-convenor of the Citizens’ Environment Network. She was also involved in Aquino’s presidential campaign and later joined the Inter-Agency Technical Working Group that crafted the environment chapter in the Philippine Development Plan.

At the forum’s close, CEC’s Quimpo noted that environmental issues could not be separated from political and economic policies. Efforts such as tree-planting and coastal cleanups should go hand in hand with fixing problems at the policy level, she added.

Quimpo said the president has so far made pro-people policy pronouncements but the challenge is delivering results. “Let us use these to ensure that change will come by pressing the Duterte government to walk the talk.” < strong>– PCIJ, July 2016

Questions remain about some senator winners in May election

Sen. Serge Osmeña. Photo by  Josh Lim (Sky Harbor)

Sen. Serge Osmeña. Photo by Josh Lim (Sky Harbor)

When 17th Congress opens on July 25, the Senate will have a new set of 12 legislators -winners of the senatorial race in the recent May 9 elections.

Not all are new faces in the Senate because there were re-electionists like Franklin Drilon, Tito Sotto, and Ralph Recto. There were also the balik-Senado, former senators who ran again like Panfilo Lacson, Richard Gordon, Francis Pangilinan, and Miguel Zubiri.

The first timers are boxing champ Manny Pacquiao; Risa Hontiveros, who is dubbed as the Senate’s Pia Wurtzbach because like the 2015 Miss Universe, she made it to the Senate on her third attempt; TESDAman Joel Villanueva; former Justice Secretary Leila de Lima; and former Valenzuela (1st district) Rep. Sherwin Gatchalian.

They join the 12 other senators whose term will be ending in 2019. Four of the last termers ran for vice presidebt last election but lost: Alan Peter Cayetano, Franciz Escudero, Gregorio Honasan, and Antonio Trillanes IV. One, Grace Poe, was not successful in her presidential bid.

The rest of the members of the 17th Senate are Loren Legarda,Aquilino Pimentel III, Cynthia Villar, JV Ejercito ,Sonny Angara,Bam Aquino, and Nancy Binay.

Missing from the Senate rosters are Sergio “Serge” Osmeña III, who had never lost a senatorial contest in his 18-year political career except the last one, and Teofisto “TJ” Guingona III. Osmeña ran as independent and Guingona was with the Liberal party ticket.
Guingona’s loss was not surprising because in the pre-election surveys he was already struggling to be in the Magic 12. In fact, in the May 3, survey of Social Weather Station, a week before Election Day, he was number 14.

It was Osmeña’s loss that was unbelievable.

In all the SWS pre-election surveys, Osmeña was in the top six. He was number six in the May 3 SWS survey.

Surveys of course are different from Election day votes but the credible ones like SWS are snapshots of realities on the ground.
Since elections in the country became automated in 2010, we are told that cheating has been completely eliminated and the only means of distorting the people’s will is through vote buying. Indeed, vote buying has reached dizzying levels in the last election. In some areas where election was hotly contested, the cost reached P7,000 per voter.

Analysis of 2016 elections senatorial results by Reform Philippines Coalition .

Analysis of 2016 elections senatorial results by Reform Philippines Coalition .

But automation gave rise to another rumored racket by unscrupulous Comelec personnel through a pre-loaded election results of the Secure Digital (SD) card. Allegedly the asking price runs to six figures.

Difficult to believe but we were shown an analysis of vote manipulation in the 2016 Senate Election done by Reform Philippines Coalition and the coincidences are hard to ignore. The percentage of the increase of senatorial candidates who paid was almost the same – in the range of 6.6 percent with one getting the highest boost of 10.4 percent.

There was talk that an administration stalwart had to complain to Malacanang when it looked like that he would be pushed down.
Two of those who allegedly paid did not make it. The pre-loaded figures were not enough to put them in the wining circle.

There’s no question about the electoral victory of President Rodrigo Duterte. He was too far ahead; no SD card operation could have pulled him down.

However, it’s a different case in the vice-presidential contest. The Liberal party’s Leni Robredo won the vice presidential contest by only 260,000 votes. It’s good that Ferdinand”Bongbong” Marcos Jr. filed an election protest. Maybe some of the questions about the senatorial contest would also be answered.