In June 2004, I asked my students in my graduate classes in Mindanao State University in Marawi about their observations on the May 2004 elections. These students were mostly Maranaos from different parts of Lanao.

There was unanimity in their declaration that there indeed was massive cheating in Lanao del Sur and many Maranao-dominated municipalities of Lanao del Norte. Many of them were direct witnesses to different forms of electoral fraud. Others heard accounts from friends or relatives. No one said that the elections were honest or showed the real will of the electorate.

Once again, the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao or ARMM is in the headlines as it reasserts its notoriety as the number one “cheating field” in the Philippine electoral terrain. So what else is new? 

As repeatedly observed and reported, cheating is done before, during and after election proper. Our most creative and entrepreneurial spirit comes to the fore during election.

Here are the various forms: vote-buying, padding of registration lists, intimidation of voters, ballot snatching or switching, misreading of names, flying voters, disenfranchisement of voters, denying entry to poll watchers, statistically improbable figures, dagdag-bawas, switching of election returns (ER), etc.

As a Muslim, I am shamed by all these.

It is unfortunate that Muslim areas are always associated with electoral fraud. It gives the false impression about Islam and the Muslims. The Islam I know does not allow cheating in any form.

Authoritarian Political Culture

Still, why is cheating happening with seeming impunity? 

The political culture in ARMM is not hospitable to the democratic ideals elections supposedly represent. We have a very authoritarian political culture that hardly gives room to the ordinary citizen’s exercise of his constitutionally mandated right of suffrage.

Those with guns, goons, and money are the decisive determinants of our electoral and policy-making processes. No wonder ARMM provinces are among the most underdeveloped in the country.  

It is hypocritical and misleading for anyone to associate “participatory democracy” with the recent electoral exercise in ARMM, particularly in Maguindanao where TU supposedly got a 12-0 sweep. That is simply rubbing salt to injury. A “command vote” is simply that—a command from someone to let a desired outcome be observed in the final tallies.

Of course, almost all sectors, agencies and stakeholders are partly to blame. Cheating on the precinct level cannot happen if teachers and education officials are not willing or unwilling tools. Vote buying is not possible if no voter sells his vote or no candidate offers to buy the same. And Comelec should get a bigger slice of the blame.

Apathy

Cheating in ARMM would at least be minimized if military and police officials and personnel assigned there during elections show utmost professionalism and non-partisanship, which many fail to do.

The bigger problem is that administration officials exploit the cheating for their own partisan agenda. Instead of purging voter lists of the dead and other “ghostly” names, many lists have unrealistic increases contrary to migration trends and statistical logic.

These are tolerated simply because they are part of the so-called “command votes” to be delivered by an “effective machinery” to the administration candidates. Manila officials are more concerned with maximizing the political goods they can extract, rather than help Muslim Filipinos address their problems.  

Cheating is more rampant with regard to national candidates. On the part of ordinary people in ARMM, there is still this attitude of apathy and resignation to the idea that whoever sits in Malacanang or the Senate will not make any difference. Hence, voters either do not fill up spaces for national candidates or they simply do not care who wins, after all, “pare-pareho lang sila.”

This is where the “market forces” enter and, depending on their agility and links with local “machineries,” they may affect the outcome of the counting in favor of certain favored candidates.

If there is some consolation now as compared to the 2004 elections, it is that cheating in ARMM may not reach the magnitude they desire. The media coverage in the recent elections is quite unprecedented and impressive. The presence of international observers may have helped.

No Islamic Basis

The suggestion that a 12-0 result in favor of Team Unity has Islamic basis is truly disturbing. The concept of consultation or Shura may be applied to other matters affecting the people but not to the final act of electing government officials. Shura should help clarify to the voters their rights and the preferences but never thwart the final exercise of their right to select their leaders.

Shura should not be used to impose the whims of a few leaders upon the electorate who are already cowing in fear and poverty. Muslims are obliged to follow agreements and contracts with other parties, even if the latter were non-Muslims.

Government officials have a contract with the government or the people. It is these officials’ obligation to follow existing laws, including election-related laws. It is these officials’ obligation to see to it that the people’s choices are protected from any form of cheating.

 The political problems in ARMM are sustained, even exacerbated, because certain national government officials and instrumentalities do not do their job.

The ignorance and prejudice of some people in Manila against Muslims are still obvious, as when one official explains the results in Maguindanao through the unique culture of some “tribal groups,” as if it is not this official’s duty to protect the sanctity of the ballot and the free will of the electorate.

It is never late for all stakeholders to change for the benefit of ARMM and the Philippine polity. The earlier, the better.

The author is a professor at the Mindanao State University in Marawi.

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