Poll exclusion of young voters

By Amando Doronila
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Up to a million voters face exclusion from the May 2010 election unless the registration of new voters speeds up to catch the registration deadline on Saturday.

Ten days before the deadline, Comelec Chair Jose Melo admitted that only 2.8 million of the 4 million new voters had registered, raising fears that new entrants to the electoral roll, composed mainly of young voters who have reached the voting age of 18, would be disfranchised. The Catholic Church-sponsored Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting said last week that it would be able to have 3 million voters registered, on top of the 2.8 million, but Comelec resources are stretched, and thousands who have trooped to its field offices to sign up have been turned back and told to try because, according to Comelec officials, the Comelec has run out of registration documents and their data capturing machines (DCM) often broke down.

The DCM, which records the voter’s fingerprints, photograph and pertinent information, can only process 300 applications a day. This shortage has caused longer queues that started to build up since the voter registration started on Dec. 2 last year. The Comelec has started blaming voters for enrolling at the last hour. “The problem with some of us is that we wait until the last minute,” Melo said.

Non-governmental groups have been campaigning for a larger registration of young voters to give them a more influential voice in the country’s next generation of leaders.

Senators Alan Peter Cayetano, Richard Gordon and Francis Pangilinan have expressed concern over the possible exclusion of a huge chunk of voters, pointing out that only about 200,000 people could register now at the rate the Comelec is processing the applications.

The large turnout, albeit at the last hour, is one indication of the high level of interest among the young in politics as the country moves toward electing a new generation of leaders. As of last July, the Comelec reported 45 million registered voters, and it expects 48 million registered voters in the May 2010 election. The demographic breakdown of the national population in 2000, according to age, reveals a young electoral base. Of the total population of 76,504,077, there were 7 million in the 20-24 age group; 6 million in the 25-29 age group; 5.5 million in the 30-34 age group; 5 million in the 35-39 group; 4.1 million in the 40-44 age group; and 3.3 million in the 45-49 age group.

The exclusion of a large segment of young voters from electoral participation could spark frustration and cynicism among the youth over the electoral process as a medium for political renewal at a time when there is an apparent clamor for a leadership change spearheaded by young and idealistic people.

While the Comelec does not appear to be up to the task of opening up the electoral list to young entrants, it has struck a blow to a devious attempt of young rebellious military officers to enter the political stream through the electoral route. In a recent resolution, the Comelec rejected an application of Magdalo, a group of soldiers who staged a coup in July 2003 against the government of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, to launch a political party and seek legislative and local positions in the May election.

The coup, led by Navy Lt. Antonio Trillanes IV, was crushed after the dissident soldiers seized the Oakwood Hotel in the heart of the Makati business center. The coup makers have been imprisoned, but its ring leader, Trillanes, ran for senator in 2007, and won, but the Supreme Court barred him from taking his Senate seat. In its resolution, the Comelec pointed out that the Magdalo group undermined civilian supremacy over the military. The resolution said there was no assurance that its leaders would not engage in another mutiny.

“All the foregoing show that the principal founders of the Magdalo Para sa Pagbabago Party remain unrepentant and that they still harbor the propensity to engage in another illegal adventure similar to the failed 2003 Oakwood (mutiny) should they fail again to achieve their goal,” the decision said.

Nicodemo Ferrer, presiding commissioner of the Comelec’s Second Division, said the poll body was concerned about the fact that majority of the group’s members were former military officers, and feared the group could use a “political party status to recruit and indoctrinate disciplined followers who may become their blind followers.”

Magdalo is fielding two jailed senior officers, an Army general and a Marine colonel who figured in another coup attempt against the Arroyo government in February 2005, and four junior officers for congressional and local government posts. This is the first time that dissident soldiers have formed a political party to enter the parliamentary stream, although a number of officers engaged in coup attempts against the government of President Corazon Aquino had been elected individually to government positions, notably former Col. Gregorio Honasan, who was elected to the Senate. Honasan, a leader of the Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM), led several coup attempts against the Aquino government from 1986 to 1989. His election to the Senate did not seem to have dampened his ardor for plotting coups, and did not stop him from acting as adviser to the Magdalo group during its coup attempts.

This record was not lost on the Comelec when it decided not to take any risks by giving legitimacy to the Magdalo Party to enter the parliamentary stream.