MANILA — The International Observer Mission-Nueva Ecija team saw today how militarization in Barangay Yuson and Manggang Marikit, Guimba, Nueva Ecija has resulted in a new type of disenfranchisement of voters.
Military overstepped their authority, Peoples’ IOM delegates say
MANILA — Soldiers from the 78th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army twice stopped and harassed delegates of the Peoples’ International Observers Mission (Peoples’ IOM) at a checkpoint in the northwestern coast of Cebu this afternoon.
The Peoples’ IOM team in Cebu included foreign observers Elizabeth Hendrickson from the English Lutheran Church in the United States and Minerva Gutierrez, a member of the political party Quebec Solidaire in Canada.
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MANILA — The umbrella group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan today scored the Commission on Elections and the Philippine National Police for its ?seeming disregard of the reality of rampant fraud and violence marring the 2007 elections.?
?The PNP and the Comelec continue to paint a rosy picture of the elections. There is hardly any recognition of the gravity of the problems of violence, disenfranchisement, vote-buying and outright vote manipulation. How can they say that the elections are peaceful when more than 100 have died and the death count is expected to get higher?? said Bayan chair Carol Araullo.
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MANILA – Gabriela Women’s Party Rep. Liza Maza condemned one of the first reported cases of harassment by members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police against Gabriela and progressive partylist groups, and the opposition in polling centers in Batangas and Laguna.
MANILA — The country?s broadest alliance of OFWs and their families today laid the blame for the low OAV turn out on Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
?If OFW voters are disillusioned and disenfranchised, it?s because of the Arroyo regime. In this regard, it is completely unjust for the DFA and the Comelec to even suggest thoughts of scrapping the OAV mechanism altogether. Given the boundless sacrifices OFWs endure to remit billions of dollars into the economy ? it?s downright dastardly for top Arroyo officials to even suggest this ?total disenfranchisement? of OFWs,? says Maita Santiago, Migrante International Secretary-General.