Philippines says Monday’s vote will be successful despite computer glitch and violence

Philippine automated polls a test of democracy

MANILA, Philippines — Despite scattered violence and a rush to fix a computer glitch, officials said Sunday the Philippines’ first automated presidential and local elections this week will be a successful test of its fragile democracy.

Opposition Sen. Benigno Aquino III, the son of revered pro-democracy icons, has topped pre-elections surveys in the nine-way race for the presidency. His rise reflects the longing to fill a moral vacuum in a country exasperated by decades of corruption, poverty and violence.

Aquino’s closest rivals include ousted President Joseph Estrada and Sen. Manuel Villar, the country’s wealthiest politician. A blistering 90-day campaign ended Saturday, with most candidates promising to steer one of Southeast Asia’s economic laggards back to the path to stability.

By the eve of Monday’s vote, thousands of workers on board military and private aircraft — and some on foot — have delivered optical counting machines to 98 percent of about 76,300 precincts across the Southeast Asian archipelago, Elections Commissioner Rene Sarmiento said.

Gregorio Larrazabal, another commissioner, said the difficulty of tampering with the automated machines — though many have experienced glitches — may have prompted some people to resort to violence and intimidation to bolster their electoral chances. Police have reported more than 30 poll-related killings — a figure that does not include an election-linked massacre last November.

Reconfigured memory cards for the machines have been delivered to regional hubs after a defect prompted a massive recall last week, according to Smartmatic, the consortium that supplied the machines.

Late delivery and final testing may delay vote-counting in some far-flung areas, the elections commission said. In the worst scenario, about a million Filipinos will be able to vote, but their ballots won’t be counted until the new cards arrive in those areas, the poll body said.

The last-minute problem sparked calls for the polls’ postponement and fueled fears of vote-rigging and violence that have long sullied Philippine elections. But the Supreme Court dismissed petitions to postpone the polls.

In another flaw discovered Sunday, a button used to open a machine’s menu program was found defective in more than 40 machines in northern Nueva Vizcaya province, which has about 400,000 voters, Sarmiento told The AP.

Replacement buttons were rushed to the province on board helicopters, he said.

“The best way to disprove all the critics who say that this cannot be done is just to do it,” Larrazabal told The Associated Press in an interview.

He added that majority of Filipinos will cast their vote and demonstrate that “they have a stake in this democracy.”

“Too many people want the elections to succeed. Too many people want change,” he said.

About 50 million of the country’s 90 million people will vote to elect a new president, vice president and officials to fill nearly 18,000 national and local posts.

Presidential spokesman Gary Olivar said he was confident the automated elections will be credible, adding its success will bolster the country’s democracy.

“This administration will put all of its resources behind a successful transition of power and preserving the stability and continuity of our republican institutions,” Olivar said in a statement.

Still, violence threatened to derail voting in some areas. More than 2,500 people have been arrested for violating a ban on firearms in public areas.

The violence tally does not include the 57 people, including 30 media workers, who were shot to death in a widely condemned massacre in southern Maguindanao province last November. Many of the victims were in a convoy to register a relative as a Maguindanao gubernatorial candidate when they were stopped allegedly by members of a rival clan

In the latest violence, three followers of a mayoral candidate were killed and six of their colleagues were wounded before dawn Sunday when they drove past an elections checkpoint and clashed with government forces in central Antique province, police said.

Two supporters of a town mayor up for re-election in southern Davao del Sur province were killed late Saturday in a clash with another candidate’s security escorts, police said. In central Iloilo province, gunmen burned a school Saturday, destroying five counting machines that were to be replaced.

Communist New People’s Army rebels also have threatened to attack government troops tasked to deliver the counting machines.

About a third of the country’s more than 1,500 cities and townships have been included in a security watchlist, where violence could erupt. Elections officials separately placed 10 provinces, cities and towns under the elections commission control late Saturday.