CER

PRESS RELEASE May 14, 2013

CONSORTIUM ON ELECTORAL REFORMS

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BANTAY ELEKSYON 2013 PAYAPA MONITORING

RELATIVE PEACEFUL, FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS After months of preparations by the Commission and Elections and concerted efforts by various election stakeholders to ensure its success, the 2013 national and local elections were relatively peaceful, free, and fair that adheres to international election standards. The Automated Election System (AES) has performed satisfactorily and the COMELEC proved to be more prepared to confront the problems that occurred during the Election Day. The lessons learned from the first implementation of AES in 2010 were well taken into consideration; hence, the contingency measures put in place were able to address most of the problems. The Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines functioned correctly with only an approximately less than 200 that malfunctioned or around 0.25% of the total 78,000 machines deployed nationwide. Most of the glitches encountered were minor and were addressed immediately in the polling precincts. But among the notable and common problems that caused some delay in the process were when the machines did not read some ballots or when there was ballot jamming. In some areas, the machines totally stopped working. Transmission of results remains to be a problem found in most areas, with BEIs encountering difficulty in connecting to the servers. It was also found that modems were not available in all polling precincts. However, long queues still troubled many of the precincts nationwide, with some voters waiting from 2-4 hours before being able to cast their voters. Other areas of the electoral process still needed improvements, such as in the difficulty of voters to find their names in the voters list and to detect spurious, unqualified, and multiple voters. Vote-buying remains to be the major violation by candidates. There was rampant campaigning in and around the polling places and posters and campaign paraphernalia proliferated. There were watchers of political candidates who still wear clothing bearing the name of the political party or candidate. Election-Related Violence Incidents (ERVIs) persisted during Election Day, and the PNP disclosed 28 cases of violent incidents. However, this translates to a lowering of ERVIs compared to the 2010 elections. The incidents mostly covered supporters of candidates. All in all, the 2013 national and local elections are successful.

Authenticated by: Ramon Casiple Chairperson, Consortium on Electoral Reforms (CER)