watchdog

exercising my right of suffrage. Precinct 1-A, Bantay, Ilocos Sur

May 14, 2007 Election

i got an invite to a most unglamorous and risky job.

you get a few hours of shut eye the entire week, and i heard that in the southern part of the country, violence is expected. in Manila though, each person is insured up to P50,000.

i'm talking about volunteering to be an election watchdog.

why not? the last altruistic thing i ever did for my country was join the Edsa Dos which ousted Joseph Estrada.

my IDs say i am a LENTE (Legal Network for Truthful Elections) and PPRCV (Parish Pastoral
Council for Responsible Voting) volunteer. the group i joined in is an "accredited citizen's arm of the Commission on Elections whose task is to monitor the canvassing of tallied votes in cities, municipalities, and provinces around the country."

together with other volunteers, i took up to the task of encoding election returns (in my province Ilocos Sur) to come up with a quickcount which we can compare against ComElecs' and other entities' results.

along the way (our second day perhaps), we were surprised that there were massive election irregularities. some election returns were tampered, others had no thumbmarks and no official seal, there were conflicting totals, and several ERs were noticeably written by just one person. one cheater's attempt came accross as hilarious by sending a copied ER and typing at the back, "this is a certified true photocopy"!!!

i was appalled. and deep inside, i was screaming "dirty politics". these "spoilt" entries shouldn't even be counted! but what can an ordinary volunteer do? i wanna tell our chairperson to do something about it. to not just stand there and witness all these crap happening. that's what we're here for, right?

being an election watchdog is not a walk in the park. for all the effort i did, all i got was a shirt, a week's free lunch (and breakfast), some multi-vitamins and new-found seminarian friends. i never volunteered to expect financial remuneration. all i was after was clean elections. and i can't believe i witnessed cheating first-hand.

i went back home dejected thinking this massive cheating is a desecration of the people's right to choose who they want to rule over their nation.


May 27, 2007. tonight as i watched the news, PPRCV Ilocos Sur was featured. Our chairperson actually had the media with her and exposed these irregularities. i let out a sigh of relief. by making the people aware, at least now i can say that my time was not wasted. it was for a good cause after all.