Category: Culture

Elderly, disabled, impaired had tough day at the polls

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

KEZIA

SENIOR CITIZENS and persons with disabilities have had to climb two to four flights of stairs at the Quirino Almario Elemtnary School in Tondo, Manila, to cast their votes. This is despite a law that requires that they be given preferential treatment during elections.

We found a 61-year-old mother, with her daughter and a 10-month old grandchild in tow, complaining that they have been waiting for hours to cast their vote. The sextagenarian, who refused to giver her name, said nobody assisted her in climbing up the two flights of stairs.

However, Rogelio Masangga, a 41-year old ortho-impaired person counted himself luckier from the other PWDs. Masangga did not experience any problem casting his vote because somebody assisted and led him to a conference room beside the school principal’s office. The conference room — located on the first floor near the main entrance of the school — was the supposed designated precinct for senior citizens and PWDs.

The Commission on Elections earlier said that the first floor of the polling precincts have been set aside for the use PWDs and senior citizens so that they do not have to climb up stairs.

School principal Ruth Ricaforte said that they were providing assistance to PWDs and senior citizens, but “only those who sought help are accommodated.” Ricaforte added that it was up to the Board of Election Inspectors to decide how they would attend to the needs of voters.

The BEIs, for their part, have no list of senior citizens and PWDs so they could not monitor if their voters were elderly or have impediments which they were supposed to assist.

Ricaforte also said that, by this time, the voters should be aware that they can be accommodated in the first floor because it was the same as the last elections. But there were no visible signage indicating the conference room was indeed designated as the special precinct for senior citizens and PWDs.

“We provide them a room so that they will be comfortable, they just have to request,” says Ricaforte.

Blessed be the innocent

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ilyich photo

IT IS SAID that children are made to pay for the sins of their parents.

But in Philippine elections, fathers sometimes make the children commit sin, or violations of election laws, in their stead.

At the Quirino Almario Elementary School in Tondo, one of the schools with the biggest number of voters in the National Capital Region, we found children distributing different types of campaign paraphernalia to voters rushing inside the voting precincts.

The campaign paraphernalia include sample ballots, paper and plastic fans, and flyers with the faces and names of candidates and party-list groups.

These materials were also scattered from the road outside the school, all the way up to the hallways of the school.

The Commission on Elections had made it clear that any form of campaigning was already banned beginning Sunday, May 12.

Some children were also distributing flyers bearing the faces of the candidates. When we tried to take their photographs and interview them, they threw down the campaign paraphernalia.

Of fiestas and elections

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SCHOOL

ELECTIONS IN THE PHILIPPINES are one big fiesta, with all the color, food, buntings, and the trappings of a Philippine feast; unfortunately, in Philippine elections, voters are far from sated. By the time they leave the polling precincts, many are angry, bewildered, and hungry for the chance to let their votes be heard and counted.

At the Quirino Almario Elementary School in Manila, what was supposed to be a polling area seemed like a picture of a barrio fiesta, with campaign posters for banderitas waving from above your head, sample ballots scattered on the streets, and a flock of voters walking in between.

Election rules, it seemed, were meant to be broken in this place, as massive amounts of campaign materials are still seen in the perimeter of the voting area.The school grounds looked like a playground with the presence of playing children who were left outside by their parents.

Fifty one-year old Jose Bernardo Braza said that casting his vote took a long time since there were too many people in the school. Braza added that one of the factors why the pace of voting is slow is due to the frequent number of breaktimes that the polling personnel are having. “Palaging may breaktime. Nung alas dose, breaktime… one-thirty, breaktime uli! Pero at least, naka-boto na ako.” (The personnel had so many breaks. At 12 noon, they had a breaktime. At 1:30 p.m., they had a breaktime again! But at least, I already cast my vote.)

Some people, however, are not as lucky as Braza. Sitting on the stairs outside the school with a child on her arms, Angely Sarmiento could not find her name in her own precinct. She said that it’s impossible for her to be deleted in the voters list since she did vote during the May 10, 2010 elections. Adding to the number of citizens who did not exercise their right to vote, Sarmiento said: “Uuwi na lang ako,” (I will just go home instead.)

And that was one more voter who did not enjoy the fiesta.

Still no priority voting for pregnant women

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THEY SAY ELECTIONS ARE FOR THE FUTURE GENERATION. But this early, we seem to be giving the future generation a hard time.

While the law on persons with disabilities require that people such as pregnant women be given priority and assistance in casting their votes, no such preferential treatment was evident in some voting places in downtown Manila.

Petite twenty two year old Margie Belocura, who is six months pregnant, waited for two hours for a chance to cast her vote in her precinct. We found her at the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) area waiting for the crowd to thin at her polling precinct.

margie

“There is no priority lane in my precinct. I still have to line up and it is very crowded. I am just waiting here until the number of voters decreases,” she said.

The Comelec earlier announced that there were special areas for persons with disabilities (PWD), senior citizens and expectant mothers in each school. However, some scho0ls apparently were not made aware of this requirement.

jennifer

Jennifer Venancio, already five months pregnant, says she had to walk all the way to the third floor of the Quirino Almario Elementary School in Tondo just to cast her vote.

“It’s hard to go to the third floor. It’s crowded and I got a headache when I went out of my precinct,” she said.

3k voters disenfranchised in Manila barangay

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DISENFRANCHSED

AT LEAST THREE THOUSAND voters from just one Manila barangay were unable to cast their votes today after they failed to find their names in the voters list in their precinct in Paaralang Quirino Almario in Tondo, Manila.

The incident cast a cloud over what appeared to generally be peaceful and orderly midterm elections in the country. The problem is also one of the most common encountered by Filipino voters who come out every three years to elect their local and national officials.

According to Malou Olanga, poll watcher of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV),  some two to three thousand voters from barangay 20 chose to go home instead of casting their votes. Olanga said the disgruntled voters were unable to find their names in the voters list posted outside the polling precinct in the school.

The Board of Election Inspectors (BEI) advised the voters to check their names and precinct numbers against the list of the PPCRV. While the voters found their names in the PPCRV list, they were not listed in the official voters list of the Comelec.

The three thousand disenfranchised voters account for 15 percent of the 20,000 registered voters from barangay 20 in Manila. As of posting time, the Comelec has not been able to resolve the issue, and the disenfranchised voters have already gone home.

Belinda Garcia, a ten-year PPCRV volunteer, said that as early as 7 a.m. voters were already complaining that they could not find their names on the master voter’s list of their assigned precincts.

Garcia says that missing names and misplaced precincts are two of the most common problems they encounter during elections.

This year, however, she along with other PPCRV volunteers were surprised to note that most of the complainants come from the same barangay – barangay 20 in Tondo.

Garcia says that she had already called up the Comelec office to report and ask for assistance, however she further claims that by midday no one from the Commission on Elections (Comelec) came to respond.

“Tinawagan namin ang Comelec, mga bandang 10am. Ang sabi, magpapadala sila pero hanggang ngayon wala pa,” Garcia said while checking her watch.

As a result, voters are forced to manually look up for their names from the stacks of pages of 2004 elections master voter’s list copy provided to PPCRV.

Unfortunately, only a few stayed and patiently sifted through the stacks of papers looking for their names. Many—visibly exasperated—simply left and refused to exercise their right to vote.

“Yung iba nakikita nila ‘yung pangalan nila dito, pero pagbalik nila sa mga presinto, wala pa rin. Bumabalik ‘yung iba dito, pero karamihan umuuwi na,” Garcia said.