INQUIRER.net Eleksyon 2007

PPCRV to field 600,000 volunteers

Agence France-Presse

MANILA, Philippines -- More than 600,000 volunteers will fan out across the country during the May midterm elections to guard against cheating politicians in an election seen as a referendum on President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's government.

The volunteers would be given copies of the certificates of votes cast during the May 14 election, said Henrietta de Villa, chairwoman of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV).

Founded in 1991, the Catholic-affiliated PPCRV is a nationwide organization accredited as the citizens' monitoring arm of the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

De Villa said there was an increased level of awareness among volunteers of the need to oversee the polls after allegations that Arroyo rigged the May 2004 presidential election.

"The damage was extensive. It discredited many institutions. The Comelec, the Armed Forces, the executive, the government itself," de Villa told the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines.

The PPRCV, she said, was less organized in the 2004 polls, which Arroyo won by more than one million votes. But she said that some 600,000 volunteers would be fielded across the country this time around.

Arroyo in 2005 publicly apologized for a "lapse in judgment" after the opposition exposed tape recordings in which a woman sounding like her could be heard allegedly trying to rig the vote count.

While Arroyo denied she cheated, her apology led to a steep drop in her popularity and sparked two failed impeachment bids against her in Congress and a failed coup attempt last year.

Voters are to choose half of the 24-member Senate, the entire 250-member House of Representatives as well as thousands of local officials from mayors to governors on May 14.

Analysts have said the election is a referendum on Arroyo's legitimacy, with many still doubting her victory in 2004.

De Villa said a recent fire that gutted Comelec's headquarters in Manila had also created fresh doubts amid opposition claims it was a deliberate attempt to burn evidence relating to the 2004 allegations of cheating.

De Villa, however, said the Comelec had assured her that the fire, now being probed by arson experts, would not affect the polls.

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