US embassy cable - 05MANILA724

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 MANILA 000724 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
DEPT FOR EAP/PMBS AND INR/EAP 
USAID FOR DOWNEY 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PREL, PGOV, PINR, EAID, SOCI, RP 
SUBJECT: GRP PREPARES FOR AUGUST ELECTIONS IN MINDANAO AND 
MOVES FORWARD WITH ELECTORAL REFORM PLANS 
 
REF: A. MANILA 682 
 
     B. MANILA 646 
     C. 04 MANILA 6032 
     D. 04 MANILA 4416 
     E. 04 MANILA 185 
 
1.  (U) This message is Sensitive but Unclassified -- Please 
handle accordingly. 
 
2.  (SBU) Summary:  Executive branch and Commission on 
Elections (COMELEC) sources confirm that regional assembly 
(ARMM) elections in Mindanao are on track to take place in 
August 2005.  Nationwide neighborhood (barangay) elections 
slated for later this year are likely to be postponed until 
at least May 2007.  In the meantime, COMELEC has sent a 
comprehensive report to Congress recommending several 
possible amendments to existing law in support of 
long-standing electoral reform efforts.  These proposals are 
likely to face in-depth legislative scrutiny later in 2005. 
 
3.  (SBU) Summary (Continued):  COMELEC seems to recognize 
that it must move forward expeditiously in order to reform a 
system that showed serious signs of strain during the May 
2004 elections.  Mission continues to underscore support for 
the reform effort via political outreach and via the 
USG-funded Consortium for Political Process Strengthening 
(CEPPS) project.  End Summary. 
 
=================== 
ARMM Election Plans 
=================== 
 
4.  (SBU) COMELEC Chairman Benjamin Abalos described the 
status of his organization's 2005 agenda in a wide-ranging 
February 14 discussion with Acting Polcouns and poloff. 
Abalos was optimistic that the planned elections in the 
Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) will take place 
on August 8, 2005.  (Note:  Elections for governor, vice 
governor and the regional legislative council are slated to 
take place at this time.  The last ARMM elections occurred in 
November 2001.  They were scheduled to take place in November 
2004, but were postponed due to budgetary constraints.  See 
Ref D.)  In a February 11 meeting with Acting Polcouns, 
Gabriel Claudio, a key political adviser to President Arroyo, 
confirmed that the ARMM elections look set to take place in 
August.  He asserted that recent fighting on Jolo Island in 
the Sulu Archipelago (Ref A) and periodic flare-ups in other 
parts of the ARMM would &almost certainly not impact8 the 
date of the election. 
 
5.  (SBU) Abalos related that approximately 20,000 new voters 
had already registered for the upcoming election and that 
COMELEC was moving forward with voter registration drives 
throughout the five ARMM provinces.  In doing this, each 
regional COMELEC office was using computerized biometric 
registration procedures in order to create a more secure and 
accessible centralized voter registry.  Abalos said the 
biometric system had allowed COMELEC to cleanse the list of 
over 100,000 duplicate registrants in the ARMM area (where 
there are just over one million registered voters total). 
COMELEC hoped these procedures  -- along with the use of 
automated counting machines -- would lead to confidence in 
the integrity of the election results in the ARMM. 
 
6.  (SBU) When queried about the automated counting machines, 
Abalos replied that COMELEC had filed a motion with the 
Supreme Court in December 2004 to request permission to 
deploy some machines to the ARMM for the election.  (Note: 
The machines, which were purchased at great cost, were 
impounded when the Supreme Court ruled that the COMELEC 
contract to purchase the machines was illegal -- Ref E.  The 
machines were not used in the May 2004 elections.)  Abalos 
commented that COMELEC "hoped very much the automated 
machines could be used because they are doing no good locked 
in a warehouse.8  He was not sure how or when the Supreme 
Court would ultimately decide the issue, however. 
 
============================= 
Postponing Barangay Elections 
============================= 
 
7.  (SBU) Abalos confirmed reports that the neighborhood 
(barangay) elections currently scheduled for October 2005 
would most likely be rescheduled for May 2007 when they could 
be held at the same time as national mid-term elections.  He 
noted that the reasons for postponing the elections include a 
lack of GRP funds to hold them.  The barangay elections are 
the lowest level of retail politics in the Philippines, 
wherein citizens from 41,974 barangays nationwide elect a 
total of nearly 350,000 local political officials.  The 
current crop of incumbent barangay officials were elected on 
July 16, 2002, for three-year terms supposed to end this 
year. 
8.  (SBU) Claudio told Acting Polcouns that he expected 
Malacanang and the legislative branches to focus fully on the 
barangay elections issue once the current debate over fiscal 
reforms concluded (see Ref B).  Claudio said he thought that 
all sides would ultimately agree that the barangay polls 
should take place as part of the mid-term elections in 2007. 
 
===================== 
COMELEC,s "Wish List" 
===================== 
 
9.  (SBU) Abalos said COMELEC had recently sent a 
comprehensive report to the House and the Senate listing its 
key electoral reform priorities.  COMELEC expected many of 
the reforms to be incorporated into a revised omnibus 
election code bill that it hoped would be signed into law in 
late 2005 or early 2006.  Top priorities include the 
following: 
 
-- The granting of COMELEC's December 2004 motion filed with 
the Supreme Court concerning use of automated counting 
machines during the upcoming ARMM elections (as mentioned 
above in paras 4 and 5); 
 
-- An amendment to allow the electronic transmittal of 
returns containing election results.  This amendment is meant 
to facilitate a more rapid calculation of voting results and 
is designed to allow for the electronic transmittal of 
results calculated by the counting machines; 
 
-- An amendment requiring all voters to register for the May 
2007 elections using the new biometric registration process. 
Voters not re-registered using this process would be barred 
from voting; 
 
-- An amendment forcing candidates standing for elected 
office to automatically resign from any currently-held 
elected position; and, 
 
-- An amendment to remove municipal and barangay-level 
electoral protest proceedings from COMELEC's jurisdiction. 
According to Abalos, electoral complaints at these lower 
levels had created too many administrative bottlenecks for 
COMELEC.  Such cases could be dealt with better by 
local-level courts. 
 
======= 
Comment 
======= 
 
10.  (SBU) COMELEC seems to recognize that it must move 
forward expeditiously in order to reform a system that showed 
serious signs of strain during the May 2004 elections.  Its 
"wish list" directly seeks to address many of the key 
problems that afflicted the May 2004 elections: nationwide 
confusion with the voter registration lists; slow counting 
due to the use of antiquated manual counting procedures; and 
an overload of election protests that consumed much of 
COMELEC's limited resources. 
 
11.  (SBU) Comment (Continued):  Mission continues to 
underscore support for the reform effort via political 
outreach and via the USG-funded Consortium for Political 
Process Strengthening (CEPPS) project.  As reviewed in 
Reftels, the current phase of the CEPPS project involves 
helping build the organizational and technological capacity 
of COMELEC and concerned NGO's through the provision of 
technical assistance and targeted training.  These efforts 
are focused in the first instance on assisting the GRP 
conduct smooth elections in the ARMM later this year. 
 
 
Ricciardone