Philippines fears electoral chaos
By Al Labita

MANILA - President Gloria Arroyo's appointment of a loyal army general as the new head of the 120,000-strong military has exacerbated political tensions in the run-up to the May 10 national elections. Speculation has mounted that Arroyo, whose preferred candidate at the polls is barely registering in opinion polls, won't step down and a military cabal would perpetuate her stay in power.

Though Arroyo has pledged a smooth transition for her would-be successor, opposition leaders are not taking the threat lightly. They have branded her run for congress in her hometown district of Pampanga province, north of Manila, as a "smokescreen" to hide her real agenda: remaining in power by all means and at all costs beyond 2010.

Prior to the 2004 elections, Arroyo announced she would not run

  

for office. On the contrary, she did run and her re-election bid was marked by alleged anomalies. She was caught on tape instructing a senior election official to ensure her victory by over one million votes against opposition rival Fernando Poe Jr.

The opposition sees a new threat in the appointment of armed forces chief Lieutenant General Delfin Bangit, one of the army generals implicated in the rigging of votes favoring Arroyo in the 2004 elections. Bangit has consistently denied the allegations.

Beginning as a senior aide-de-camp with the rank of colonel when Arroyo was vice president, Bangit was promoted to a star rank and made the chief of the presidential security group when Arroyo succeeded then president Joseph Estrada in 2002. He later headed the intelligence service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the army. Subordinates reportedly often addressed him as "emperor".

Like most army generals, Bangit is a graduate of the elite state-run Philippine Military Academy (PMA), class 1978, which adopted Arroyo as an honorary member. What arouses the opposition's suspicion of a potential repeat of the 2004 election scandal is that Arroyo's other PMA "classmates" are also commanders of the army, navy and air force - a practice the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos used to keep himself in power for nearly 20 years.

Bangit has vowed that as a "professional organization" the military will be neutral and non-partisan in the elections, currently led in opinion polls by opposition senator Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino, saying that "only God can make me commit illegal orders". Its unclear if Aquino would open probes into the various scandals that have plagued Arroyo's government if he were elected.

Manila is currently abuzz with rumors about the so-called "Oplan August Moon" plot - an alleged military plan to sabotage the political exercise and justify the continued presidency of Arroyo. A number of lawmakers have expressed alarm about the rumor, noting that it could spark a constitutional crisis on the rule of succession.

The unexpected and sudden electricity crisis in Mindanao has given rise to doomsday scenarios for the elections. In response to appeals by businessmen, Arroyo has declared a state of calamity in Mindanao to stabilize power supplies and check the unabated rise of basic commodity prices.

The opposition fears the power outages, which have caused 12-hour daily blackouts in the region, may form part of a grand conspiracy to steal votes or subvert the electoral process altogether. Coupled with the power crisis is the widespread apprehension that the automated counting machines that voters will use for the first time on election day might fail to deliver the results within 24 hours. These will be the country's first-ever automated elections.

A Venezuelan-led consortium, Smartmatic, clinched a whopping 7.2 billion pesos (US$157 million) government contract to supply 82,200 precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines to be distributed to all polling precincts throughout the country. While the PCOS replace the manual voting whose results often take months to tally, there are fears that the machines may be manipulated to favor certain candidates.

Any power vacuum created by a botched or highly contentious election could tempt the military to seize power. Senator Rodolfo Biazon, a former military chief who fought several coup attempts during Corazon Aquino's tumultuous presidency, has suggested that Congress appoint a "caretaker president" in the event of a failure of elections and that no new leaders are sworn in by June 30 this year.

Such apprehension is not without basis. Under the succession rule of the Constitution, Arroyo's vice president, Noli de Castro, would be mandated to succeed her. But like Arroyo, his six-year term also lapses on June 30. De Castro, a former broadcast journalist, has not sought reelection.

Juan Ponce Enrile, president of the senate, would be next in line. Unless reelected as a senator at the May 10 elections, he would not be qualified to succeed Arroyo. The same is true with House of Representatives speaker Prospero Nograles, who has aspired for the mayoralty post in Davao City. Another possible successor, Supreme Court chief justice Reynato Puno, is set to retire next month.

Like other candidates, presidential contender Aquino is wary of the danger looming on the electoral horizon. He has threatened to unleash waves of street protests should he be cheated of a highly anticipated victory in the elections.

Aquino, the Liberal Party's standard bearer, has mobilized the "yellow army" identified with his late mother Corazon Aquino to lead mass actions should there be a failure of the electoral process. The umbrella group comprises civil society groups, non-governmental organizations, volunteer lawyers, students and other loyal followers of the Aquino family.

Aquino's veiled threat recalls a similar move by his late mother in the 1986 "snap" presidential polls, when then dictator Marcos proclaimed himself the winner under murky circumstances. The then plain housewife Aquino launched a civil disobedience campaign that eventually led to Marcos' ouster.

But the senator Aquino's similar plan, viewed with disdain by many sectors weary of the country's tumultuous street politics, appears to have backfired on his popularity rating, which has been dramatically falling in opinion surveys since January.

Filipino voters generally don't want another "people power" revolution, which brought Arroyo to power and has miserably failed to live up to expectations. Indeed the problems that the most recent revolt sought to get rid of remain the same - graft and corruption, abject poverty, an inept bureaucracy, festering communist and Muslim insurgencies and massive unemployment - and many hope for a genuinely democratic new start with a newly elected government in May.

Al Labita has worked as a journalist for over 30 years, including as a regional bureau chief and foreign editor for the Philippine News Agency. He has worked as a Manila correspondent for several major local publications and wire agencies in Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and the United Kingdom.

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