HONEST, orderly, peaceful, and credible elections on May 13, 2013 — that is at core the duty and burden of the boots on ground of the Commission on Elections. Will they prove themselves equal to the task? What worries, what inspires them? We checked it out.
Nine Fellows of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) conducted a survey, interviews, and field visits to the Comelec offices in the towns and cities of Luzon and the Visayas. They filed this composite report in text, photo, and video formats.
In this second part of our report, our Fellows looked at the state of the Comelec in the provinces of Negros Occidental, Northern Samar, and Southern Leyte.
The authors of this report (Comelec offices in the Visayas) are Julius D. Mariveles, Eladio D. Perfecto, and Jani C. Arnaiz, with additional reporting by Barbara Mijares and Ashley Liza. This report was supervised by PCIJ Training Director Che de los Reyes.
BACOLOD CITY COMELEC OFFICE
Interview and Photos by JULIUS D. MARIVELES
AT THE 24-square-meter Comelec City Office in Bacolod City, there are two things that are present on nearly all the desks: a mini electric fan and stacks of documents.
“Most of the air-conditioning units given to us are second-hand and would conk out after some time,” lawyer Mavil Majarucon, city election registrar, says inside her office, although it feels more like a shoebox.
Air is prized a lot here. The main room of the Comelec City Office, which is a little more than twice the size of Majarucon’s space, is crammed full of books of voters and other election paraphernalia — and employees sweating in the summer heat.
The Office has 13 regular election assistants, eight casual employees, and three supplemental staff from the Bacolod City government. With a total of 25 staff members, the Bacolod City Comelec Office has by far the biggest number of personnel in all city Comelec offices visited by the PCIJ fellows. But then they have to see to the needs of 259,302 voters and more than 53 candidates running for the congressional, mayoral, vice mayoral, and city council seats in the May 13, 2013 polls.
Outside, voters line up at the tile-lined counters, waiting for the issuance of their voter’s IDs or certifications as they go about their jobs inside.
“Some of my employees would file leaves of absences because of rising blood pressure,” says Majarucon.
The Comelec office in this capital city of Negros Occidental province is housed inside the Bacolod Arts, Youth and Sports (BAYS) Center, a facility built in the 1990s. BAYS Center is located along San Juan Street, just across the public plaza and around 3.5 kilometers from the New Government Center, which hosts most of the offices of the local government. BAYS Center itself has some of the other local government offices, including that of the Office of the Building Inspector. On its top floor is Police Station 1. Just outside the Center is a basketball court and gymnasium that doubles as a canvassing area during Election Day.
Majarucon says her office has already reached the ideal ratio of one election assistant for every 20,000 voting population. But she says her office still needs more manpower — a problem that becomes more acute right before an election.
“The misconception is that we are working only when there are polls but that is not true,” Majarucon says. She adds that the period between elections is when Comelec usually does its continual cleansing of the list of voters. This is aside from “attending to other administrative tasks like the issuance of certifications for voters.”
Besides providing the office space, Majarucon says that the city government pays for all the utilities of the Comelec office. “I am like a squatter here, I don’t even know how much is being spent for lights and water,” she says.
If she had her way, Majarucon would rather have the poll body rent its own office space and pay for its own utility bills. “I don’t want to keep asking for favors from the local government because officials would also ask for something in return,” she says. But she quickly clarifies that such “requests” are of the legal kind.
Majarucon says, though, that the most urgent problem is the low salary grades of Comelec employees compared to those in other government offices. “Our salaries are way below that of our national counterparts,” she says, adding that the head office had slashed overtime pay for its personnel.
She recalls the time under then Comelec Chairman Benjamin Abalos, when Comelec field personnel were receiving overtime pay for up to four hours of work on Saturdays and Sundays, six months before the elections. “Now,” she says, “we are being paid for only two hours on Saturdays.” – PCIJ
NEGROS OCCIDENTAL, COMELEC PROVINCIAL OFFICE
Interview and Photos by JULIUS D. MARIVELES
NEGROS OCCIDENTAL Provincial Election Supervisor Wil Arceno thinks his office is undermanned. For Arceno, Comelec Negros Occidental could better see to the needs of the province’s 1,574,784 voters (including that of Bacolod City) and monitor its 825 candidates running in the May 13, 2013 poll — including 43 candidates running for various elective posts at the province level — if his office would be given at least three more personnel. The additional staff members could be hired as casuals, he says.
The Provincial Comelec here has 11 staff members: the provincial election supervisor, three election assistants, six casual employees, and one supplemental staff from the provincial government. They share a 50-square-meter office inside the Bacolod Arts, Youth and Sports (BAYS) Center, which is right across the Provincial Capitol. The Center also houses other government offices of the province.
Besides providing the office space, the provincial government of Negros Occidental shoulders the Comelec provincial office’s electricity and water bills. The Comelec head office shoulders the phone and Internet bills, says Arceno.
Arceno says that his office also receives a P10,000 quarterly petty cash budget from Comelec national. This, he says, is spent mostly for reproduction and courier expenses. But there are times when the field office had to dip into its petty cash fund to buy additional office supplies because those purchased by the national office — such as bond papers and pens — are hardly enough for the provincial Comelec’s daily operations.
During an election year, the Comelec head office is also supposed to provide a ‘mobilization fund’ for its field offices. The amount, Arceno explains, is meant to support conferences and meetings with members of the Philippine Army and the Philippine National Police (PNP) for the entire election period. But according to Arceno, this fund is often released late, sometimes with just a few days to go before the polls.
It might have come as a relief for Arceno that for the May 13, 2013 polls, he had already received his P75,000 mobilization fund. Then again, as of March 6 when the interview was conducted — or three weeks before the campaign period for local bets had even officially begun — that mobilization fund was already gone because of a series of meetings with Comelec’s deputized agencies, according to Arceno.
The situation might have been compounded by the field office’s lack of vehicles. As far as he can remember, Arceno says, Comelec has not bought a vehicle for any of its provincial offices. – with additional reporting by Barbara Mijares and Ashley Liza, PCIJ
MURCIA TOWN, NEGROS OCCIDENTAL
Interview and Photos by JULIUS D. MARIVELES
IS IT an office or a closet? With a space of only about 15 square meters, the Comelec office in the municipality of Murcia is perhaps the smallest among all Comelec offices in the province of Negros Occidental, says Municipal Election Officer Shiela Sol.
Located inside the municipal hall where the National Police, the Mayor’s Office, and the Sangguniang Bayan are based, the tiny office houses seven Comelec employees: a municipal election officer, two election assistants, and four supplemental personnel from the municipal government.
Because of the limited space, documents are stored inside a small stockroom above the office. Accessible only by climbing the steep wooden stairs, the stockroom looks in danger of collapsing onto the employees working below because of the crush of all the documents stuffed inside it.
But the cramped office space is hardly the only problem hindering the Comelec municipal office in Murcia from catering to the needs of the municipality’s 43,786 voters and 31 candidates vying for different elective posts in the May 13, 2013 elections. Its staff members also have to contend with the office’s lack of basic communication equipment, such as landlines and fax machines, while going about their daily tasks.
In fact, according to Sol, her staff members have to go to the nearby office of the town mayor and use the fax machine there whenever the Comelec Law Department in Manila asks for reports. Sometimes, they have to travel 16 kilometers all the way to Bacolod City to use the fax machine in the office of the provincial election supervisor there. To be able to communicate with each other, the staff members of Murcia Comelec rely on their own mobile phones.
Sol also says the number of staff members on her team is inadequate to effectively monitor all campaign activities, such as public rallies, of the candidates running in Murcia.– PCIJ
NORTHERN SAMAR- COMELEC PROVINCIAL OFFICE
Interview and Photos by ELADIO D. PERFECTO
BECAUSE it is classified as a second-class province in the Eastern Visayas region, Northern Samar’s 24 municipalities are supposedly earning an aggregate average income of “P360 million or more but less than P450 million” annually (per Department of Finance Department Order No.23-08 Effective July 29, 2008).
But Northern Samar’s provincial government does not appear to share much of that income with the provincial Comelec office. Besides providing the office space and footing the electric bill, the provincial government does not seem to provide anything else to the poll body’s office there.
Located in the old, one-storey Provincial Agriculture building in Northern Samar’s capital town of Catarman, the Comelec provincial office is manned by seven staff members: four of them permanent employees and three casual staff. They administer the province’s 375,268 registered voters and monitor 28 candidates vying for provincial posts in the upcoming May 13, 2013 polls while squeezed inside an 18-square meter office alongside stacks of documents and old election paraphernalia.
But having a small office space seems to be the least of the provincial Comelec personnel’s worries. Northern Samar Comelec staff Margarita Tobes says they also have to grapple with frequent power interruptions and delayed delivery of election paraphernalia. Compounding such problems are delays in the release of their budget and in the delivery of their office supplies from the Comelec head office in Manila.
Tobes says what his office needs most urgently are additional permanent personnel and additional compensation for their staff in the form of salary increases and benefits, including hazard pay and medical allowance. The office could also benefit from Internet connectivity, which it currently lacks.– PCIJ
NORTHERN SAMAR- MUNICIPAL COMELEC OFFICES
Interviews and Photos by ELADIO D. PERFECTO
THE LOCAL government unit (LGU) is supposed to give the local Commission on Elections (Comelec) office “suitable office space,” according to the Omnibus Election Code (Batas Pambansa Blg. 881). Perhaps the Code should have been more specific because in Northern Samar and in far too many other places, LGUs seem to have a questionable definition of “suitable.”
Take the local Comelec in Northern Samar’s capital town of Catarman, where seven staff members hold office in a 24-square-meter space. But then the island municipality of Laoang has it worse; the local Comelec’s five staff members have to squeeze themselves into a cubbyhole a mere nine square meters in size.
Northern Samar has 24 municipalities, but only 21 municipal Comelec offices in the province were visited for this story. All but one of these 21 offices could hardly contain all the documents and old election materials and paraphernalia that these offices still cannot afford to discard. Sixteen are only 12 square meters in size; some are even smaller. The smallest Comelec office in Palapag town is only six square meters, definitely not much larger than a closet. The most spacious Comelec office meanwhile, is located in Pambujan town. At 48 square meters, Pambujan Comelec is deemed “spacious.”
All of the 21 offices are housed in buildings owned by the municipal government. Majority of them are located inside the municipal hall itself, either on the ground floor or on the second floor. Some have come to occupy the old municipal building left by the local government when it moved to a new municipal hall. (Or in the case of the municipalities of Laoang and Lavezares, the Sangguniang Bayan building and the Association of Barangay Captains building, respectively.)
On average, each municipal office has only two permanent employees: an election officer and an election assistant. In some cases, there is a third staff hired by the LGU and assigned to the Comelec office. Catarman has the biggest number of staff members at seven employees: three permanent staff and four supplemental personnel from the LGU.
But with 45,234 registered voters, Catarman also has by far the highest number of voters among the 21 municipalities surveyed. In fact, it has 10,508 more voters than Laoang, the municipality with the second highest number of voters among those surveyed in the province.
Because of the staffing shortage, some Comelec offices were empty at the time of the visit as the election officer and his assistant were doing the rounds of monitoring in their jurisdiction.
Some of the areas visited are island municipalities, which can be reached only by riding a commuter boat. When such accessibility issues are present, having good communication facilities becomes even more vital for the efficient operations of the local Comelec. But majority of the Comelec offices there lack Internet connection.
Understandably, this is included in the list that the Comelec field staff interviewed hoped the Comelec head office will be able to provide them, along with an increase in salaries and other benefits such as hazard pay and medical allowances. In nearly all of the 21 municipal Comelec offices visited, the municipal governments are already shouldering the electric bills and, in some cases, also providing for some office supplies. – PCIJ
SOUTHERN LEYTE: COMELEC MUNICIPAL OFFICES
Interviews and Photos by JANI C. ARNAIZ
SOUTHERN LEYTE is a third-class province in the Eastern Visayas Region. This means that the province earns on average, “P270 million or more but less than P360 million” each year (based on Department of Finance Department Order No. 23-08 Effective July 29, 2008). Southern Leyte comprises 18 municipalities and one component city. Among the municipalities, only seven were visited for this story.
Three of these municipal Comelec offices can be found inside the municipal hall, while the remaining four occupy buildings owned by the local government near the municipal hall. The Comelec office in Anahawan town, for instance, holds office inside the municipal gym while those in Hinundayan and San Juan towns occupy old local government buildings that used to serve as the municipal halls.
The electric bills of all the offices visited are also shouldered by the host municipal governments.
Besides providing the office space and paying for the electricity, however, the local government units (LGUs) provide little else to the local Comelec. The poll body’s field personnel are thus dependent on the Comelec head office in Manila to provide them the most basic resources that they need to operate, such as office supplies and equipment. But it appears that head office support for these necessities is rather wanting. According to the Comelec field staff, the delivery of office supplies tends to be delayed. Majority of the Comelec offices visited also suffer from lack of computers.
It’s no wonder that the shortage of office supplies is the most urgent problem identified by the Comelec field personnel in Southern Leyte. But all of them can also use more pairs of hands to help them carry out their tasks.
On average, each municipal Comelec visited rely on only two permanent field staff, regardless of the number of registered voters in the jurisdiction. For instance, San Juan town, which has the highest number of registered voters at 8,465, has only two personnel. The town of Limasawa, meanwhile, has less than half of San Juan’s registered voters (4,065 registered voters for the May 13, 2013 polls) but has the same number of staff members as San Juan.
To address the staffing gap, the LGU assigns additional staff to the Comelec office. But in four of the seven offices visited, the Comelec officers say the LGU does so “only when needed.” They did not elaborate how such a ‘need’ for additional manpower is determined and what process the LGU goes through in assigning its employees to the municipal Comelec.
Like its counterparts in Northern Samar, the Comelec municipal field offices in Southern Leyte are also grappling with problems related to office space. The 14-square-meter Comelec offices in the towns of Pintuyan and San Francisco are crammed with documents and other election materials. Yet, those two offices are already the largest among the seven Comelec offices visited. The rest range from seven square meters to 10.5 square meters in size. – PCIJ
MAASIN CITY, SOUTHERN LEYTE
Interviews and Photos by JANI C. ARNAIZ
MAASIN CITY is a fourth-class component city of Southern Leyte province. This means that Maasin earns an average annual income of “P160 million or more but less than P240 million,” based on Department of Finance Department Order No. 23-08 Effective July 29, 2008. Being a component city, Maasin’s 51,622 registered voters will also be electing their provincial officials in the upcoming May 13, 2013 polls.
Perhaps because Maasin City is the provincial capital, the Comelec office there holds the distinction of being the only field office that can be described as “orderly” among the commission’s field offices in Southern Leyte visited for this story. It also occupies the largest office space at 72 square meters.
But perhaps this is just as well, because with 11 staff members, the Maasin City Comelec office also has the largest number of personnel in the province. They include six permanent staff, two casual/contractual staff, and three supplemental staff hired by the city government.
Even with a relatively large workforce, Assistant Election Officer Jade Rebadomia thinks they could still use additional staff support from the Comelec central office in Manila. Yet when asked what needs to be addressed most urgently, Rebadomia says it is the lack of office supplies.
The Maasin City Comelec office stands on local government property near the city gym. Besides providing the office space, the city government also foots the electric bill of the local Comelec. – PCIJ