Tags: Elections
By Anna Valmero
PASAY CITY, METRO MANILA — The Commission on Elections (Comelec) said Monday that voting in some areas in the country have been suspended, with at least two municipalities in Iloilo declared to have a failure of elections.
“We have already announced before that we expect failure of elections in some areas, but not nationwide. If it will affect the proclamation of local or national candidates, we will hold special elections,” said Comelec spokesman James Jimenez.
In Iloilo, all clustered precincts in the municipalities of Samar and Gimbal suspended voting after ballots for precincts in the two areas were switched, said Jimenez.
“Even thought the polling precincts have the PCOS machines, the ballots delivered to the precinct are not the ones configured to be read by the machines. So we are declaring a failure of elections here because essentially, the voters cannot vote. We are trying to determine what happened so we can switch them back and set a special elections within two to 30 days,” he said.
In Lanao del Sur, the municipalities of Masui, Lumba-Bayabao, Tubaran and Lumba Kaunayan are recommended for failure of elections after the board of election canvassers failed to show up since 7a.m.
Meanwhile, some precincts in the municipalities of Domarogong Bayang Sultan Dumalundong were also recommended for failure of elections but field reports fail to identify cause for this.
Due to open hostilities, there is also a recommendation to declare failure of elections in Alabarka in Basilan. In the municipality of Sumicip, a precinct was earlier harassed by unidentified elements, which was subdued by the Philippine Marines, which sustained one casualty from the encounter, said Jimenez.
“Field reports indicate there is more violence now compared to previous elections and the quality of violence has gotten worse because we are now seeing open hostilities.”
“We will issue a full report on this and declare whether we will declare a failure of elections in these areas,” he added.
Earlier, delays in the poll machines due to paper jams in the poll machines and inefficient verification of the identity of voters led to the delay of the country’s first attempt to automate the polls.
About 17,943 positions are up for grabs in the May 10 elections, with over 85,000 local and national candidates competing for these. Tthere are 37,062 voting centers and 74,427 clustered precincts. Each clustered precinct has one PCOS machine, each of which is designed to accommodate up to 1,000 voters.
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