MARAWI CITY — Election reform activists and watchdogs, and election officials have expressed hope that the unusual calm in Lanao del Sur today, eve of election day, will not be the calm before the storm.
As of 4 pm Sunday, not a single election-related incident has been monitored by the Citizens’ Coalition for Electoral Reforms in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (C-CARE), except for an incident in Masiu town where supporters of a candidate for mayor tried to bar the transport of PCOS (Precinct Count Optical Scan) machines into one village.
Even then, no violent incident ensued.
On Friday, a woman in Marantao was wounded in a drive-by shooting but election monitors deployed in the town said that it was related to a rido case.
At the C-CARE election monitoring center, the incident tally sheets for 38 towns and one city in Lanao del Sur are empty. Only the Masiu incident was listed.
“We hope this trend continues until the end of the electoral exercise on Monday,” said women activist Samira Gutoc-Tomawis, a sectoral member of the Regional Legislative Assembly of the ARMM.
Gutoc-Tomawis credits the enhanced presence of military and police forces in the province for the unusual calm in the place that has been tagged among the areas of security concern in relation to Monday’s exercise.
C-CARE’s Salic Ibrahim told the Inquirer that five towns are the subject of intense security focus for the heated tension arising from the political contest. These are Kapai, Tugaya, Sultan Dumalondong, Lumbaca-Unayan and Butig.
Tensions rose in Butig after the reported presence of armed men in several areas of the town on Saturday, May 11.
The five towns are the same areas where security became a problem during the May 2010 general elections.
Violence and fraud had in past elections marred elections in Lanao del Sur, earning the province monicker of being “the cheating capital of the Philippines” following the “Hello, Garci” scandal where a top election official oversaw the rigging of the province’s presidential vote in 2004.
At the provincial capitol, the dispatch of election forms to the province’s 39 towns was very orderly, in contrast to previous periods when the atmosphered resembled that of a marketplace. The queuing for the forms was done per muncipality and supervised by policemen and soldiers.
By mid-afternoon, a total of 18 towns had already claimed the election paraphernalia. One concern related to the transport of the materials is the heavy rains that washed the province around late afternoon, expectedly delaying travel to the far-flung towns.
Another unusual feature of the elections here is the muted buzz of the vote-buying and vote-selling frenzy.
“This could be because many politicians are limiting spending owing to their losses in the investment scams,” according to Gutoc-Tomawis.
The province is ‘ground zero’ of the Coco investment scam that went bust middle of last year. This was followed by a similar racket, Aman Futures that also victimized many Maranao families.
However, in towns where narco-politics is believed to be present, by many accounts vote-buying remains as rampant as ever. In Marantao and Maguing towns, elections monitors have documented vote-buy offers in the thousands of pesos per voter.
In a bid to enter polling centers with the same privilege as accrredited poll monitors, election watchdog groups said some parties have resorted to “faking” their uniforms.
Zeny Ibrahim of C-CARE said they noticed that the design of the group’s T-shirts issued to its field monitors have been copied and worn by persons identified as partisan campaigners.