A DAY before elected officials assume their won posts, the International Observer Mission (IOM) yesterday said that the May 9 national and local polls had “failed to meet international standards” of having a free, honest, and fair elections.
In its 42-page report on the Philippine Elections 2022, the IOM said that the poll exercises conducted by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) was not at par with the standards as far as the conduct of the campaign and elections are concerned.
“Based on the extensive IOM ground reports and verified media and social media reports before and after May 9, 2022, the International Observer Mission concludes that the Philippine Elections 2022, especially the presidential, senatorial, and House of Representatives elections, including for the 20 percent party-list seats, failed to meet the international standard of a free, honest, and fair election,” said the IOM report.
“This election does not meet the standard of ‘free, honest and fair’ elections because of these prevailing conditions that robbed the voters of access to reliable information, access to the voting places without intimidation, and a credible vote counting system,” it added.
The international observers said the elections were marred by a “higher level of failure” of the automated election system coupled with a “higher level of blatant vote-buying, disturbing level of red-tagging, and a number of incidents of deadly violence.”
“The failure of the VCMs is the responsibility of Smartmatic USA Corp and its partner SMMT-TIM 2016 Inc, who already faced credibility issues after alleged poll irregularities in past Philippine elections,” the report said.
“These violations took the form of political killings, shootings, abductions, death threats, political arrests and detention, harassment and surveillance of candidates and supporters, very large-scale red tagging, very widespread vote-buying, media manipulation and repression, fake news, and harassment of journalists by the Marcos campaign,” it added.
The report also noted how there many voters failed to cast their vote.
“Many had to trust that election officials would later put their marked ballot paper through a Vote Counting Machine (VCM), thus undermining the secrecy of the vote,” said the IOM.
Similarly, the IOM pointed that vote counting was “neither transparent nor reliable” due to the failure of several VCMs along with the unbelievable speed in the transmission of election returns.
“The extraordinary loss of almost 900,000 votes by the Bayan Muna party-list, and the election of only one opposition Senate candidate, Risa Hontiveros, out of 12 Senate positions up for election, how could that happen if the Robredo presidential vote was 30 percent?” asked the group.
The IOM also noted how only 480,000 were able to vote out of almost 1.7 million registered overseas voters despite having a month-long period to cast their votes.
“From the first day, OFWs faced voter suppression, disenfranchisement, and other obstacles to voting,” the report lamented.
To note, the IOM team that observed the May 9 polls is composed of some 60 volunteer human rights advocates coming from at least 11 countries.
The mission is a five-month monitoring period of the campaigning, election day, and post-election activities until June 22.
The mission members were deployed to Central Luzon, Calabarzon, Bicol Region, National Capital Region (NCR), Central Visayas, Eastern Visayas, Western Visayas, and Mindanao.
There, they were able to interview voters belonging to various sectors/communities and people’s organizations, candidates, campaigners, government authorities, politicians, media, various civil society organizations, churches, among others.
The Comelec has earlier touted the success of the May 9 polls, particularly after seeing the highest voter turnout in recent history, having the lowest election-related violence, and the transmission of all election results “in record time”.
