Second of three parts
THE Voting. With 50,672 candidates vying for 17,717 positions and the nods of 43,551,281 eligible voters in 216,725 precincts, the polls on May 10, 2004, were bound to be fractious, messy, and in many places, fraudulent and violent.
On the whole, however, the voting on the second Monday of May 2004 was deemed little different from past elections in terms of irregularities, confusion and bloodshed, as gauged by most seasoned poll watchers, reputable watchdog organizations like the National Citizens Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel), major religious groups, and some 100 foreign observers.
The 322 violent incidents counted by the Institute for Popular Democracy from campaign to canvassing were exceeded only by the 405 clashes in 1986. But the 77 deaths recorded were the fewest in two decades.
Namfrel estimated possibly more than a million people were not able to vote due to mistakes in the new computerized voters’ lists in many precincts. But the election watchdog group and other independent observers did not see this or any other problem as major enough to materially affect the contests for national positions.
The Results. On May 22, 2004, twelve days after the polls, the National Citizens Movement for Free Elections declared: “The results of the elections are credible and reflect the vote of the people. We did not see enough electoral anomalies at the national level to have a material effect on the national results.”
Ten days later, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) reported: “There were some instances of cheating and violations of election law by political parties in their areas, but these did not affect the voting in general.” A year later, amid the ‘Garci’ tapes controversy in mid-2005, the CBCP affirmed its post-election assessment, which was based on reports from thousands of parishes nationwide: “It is the view of the bishops that the results of the elections reflected the will of the Filipino people.”
Notably, the outcomes of pre-election surveys, exit polls, and the Namfrel, Comelec and official Congress canvassing were consistent. Arroyo topped all these tallies by substantial margins. As she did in the last few surveys before May 10, GMA led FPJ in the four exit polls conducted by leading broadcast stations (see tables).
Arroyo eventually garnered 40 percent of the vote in the Congress tally, not far from her percentages in nearly all surveys, exit polls, and Namfrel’s quick count. Indeed, the Congress and Namfrel ratios of votes won by the five top candidates were nearly identical, with differences of less than one percentage point between the percentages garnered by each candidate in Congress and Namfrel counts (see tables).
The ratios matched even if they were based on completely different source documents: 176 certificates of canvass (CoCs), tabulated by city, provincial, and special election canvassers, for the Congress count; and about 180,000 precinct-level election returns (ERs) in the Namfrel count.
These completely separate tabulations were done precisely to uncover any huge fraud or error. If there were significant variations between the congressional and citizens’ counts, then there might have been reason to suspect massive cheating.
In the 1986 snap elections, the great disparity between Comelec and Namfrel tallies alerted the nation to massive fraud. Indeed, while Marcos won in the official count at the Batasan, Corazon Aquino beat him in the citizens’ tabulation at the watchdog group’s operations center in La Salle Green-hills (where her winning tally board is still preserved).
In 2004, however, the Congress and Namfrel outcomes showed near-identical voting percentages for all presidential candidates, with Gloria Arroyo winning in both tallies.
The first part was published this past Monday. The last part will appear on Friday.
Ricardo Saludo heads the Center for Strategy, Enterprise & Intelligence (
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), publishing The CenSEI Report, which provides analytic research on national, business and global issues.
