Poll Watching in Cebu: Fraud and Unlikely Heroes

CEBU, Philippines —  On stage, Manuel Oyson, a local sportswriter and chairman of the provincial canvass board, drummed his fingers on the table. Beside him, turned to the side, another board member leafed through his morning paper.

At the tally tables on the floor below, Pablo Garcia, an aging opposition attorney, suspenders showing through his lightweight barong , was orating, his arm pumping the air:

“These returns patently and almost palpably were prepared by one or perhaps two persons. The handwriting on the date is the same. We will protest!”

Saturday’s official canvass in the province of Cebu began as a portrait of politics anywhere: bureaucrats, old pols, the squeaking wooden floor of a dated civic building.

A ripple of applause from outside the room heralded change, rising to an ovation as the volunteers from Samboan entered the door. They came in two- or three-abreast, the young men in the vanguard carrying the ballot box as though it were a ticking bomb: They dared not drop it at their feet, but they wanted to pass it on as soon as possible.

The volunteers, 30 or 40 strong, had guarded the box and its ballots from the polls of Samboan North to the capital here, 85 miles by foot and bus. Their column included teen-agers in T-shirts, nuns in habit and farm boys in straw hats. Their arrival somehow electrified the canvassing hall, though the trip had been without problems. “We were so many,” explained Sister Bacilides Ramas.

As the boxes continued to come in from outlying towns and barrios, each group was met with applause, even two elderly gentlemen who arrived in a yellow cab, each carrying a ballot box from the southern town of Alcoy.

Marcos Assails Activists

The National Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) has been assailed by President Ferdinand E. Marcos as a group of activist partisans for the opposition.

“I am sorry to say that NAMFREL’s personnel have been most active and energetic in breaking the law,” Marcos said in his Saturday night press conference in Manila.

In many individual cases, the president and other critics of the citizens’ group are right in their accusations of pro-opposition sentiment. But in Friday’s presidential election, the group’s volunteers in Cebu and elsewhere showed uncommon courage for a goal that both sides said they wanted: free and fair elections.

Under the election procedure, ballots are counted at the precinct level, and the returns then are transported to municipal registrars and provincial canvass centers by a neutral poll board chairmen and representatives of the rival political parties. The citizens’ watchdog group asked its volunteers to escort the boxes as well to help ensure their safety and integrity.

There were examples across the country--nuns guarding ballot boxes in Pasay City, Metro Manila; volunteers forming a human chain around the city hall in Makati, Manila’s business district, to assure safe passage for incoming ballots. One NAMFREL volunteer has been killed and several wounded.

Lt. Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, armed forces vice chief of staff, reported Saturday that there had been more than 25 reported cases of ballot-box snatching, and in about 20 precincts nationwide, voting was suspended because of harassment and intimidation by armed men and political partisans.

In this province, one such story unfolded Saturday at NAMFREL headquarters, the gymnasium of San Carlos University.

“Those are the Catmon people; they just came in,” a worker said, pointing to the bleachers where a group of young Filipinos sat munching sandwiches, looking a bit dazed.

Armed Goons Reported

On Friday night, Marilou Chiongbian, a NAMFREL official, had said: “We’re worried about the Catmon people. There are reports of armed goons there. But so far, they’re still holding on.”

Reports of this or that danger were sweeping the headquarters of the citizens’ poll-watching group throughout election day. Some were unfounded, but the one concerning the Catmon people was accurate, according to the returning volunteers.

Catmon is a town that lies within the political stronghold of Ramon Durano, who had made clear his distrust and dislike of the citizens’ organization even before the election. The decision to send the group’s poll watchers there was made only a few weeks ago.

“We had only two Sundays to train them, to teach them what to look for to prevent fraud,” said Chiongbian. “We told them there would be goons, but we would use the truth to defeat force.”

Led by Lay Minister

The Catmon people were led by Julito Sarmiento, 22, a lay minister at San Carlos University. They were sent north from Cebu in two groups, one on election eve and the second on Friday, 96 in all. They were allowed to observe the voting within the polling place, unlike their fellow volunteers in Danao, Durano’s nearby base.

But intimidation also started on election day, after the first group spent the night in a parish hall. “They (armed men) strafed three polling places,” said Sarmiento, firing rifles at the buildings but hitting no one. Purita Sanchez, a professor of nursing at the University of the Philippines in Cebu, who led one team in the group, said there were rumors that voting centers would be attacked throughout the day.

“We just stayed in the polling places, we just stayed,” she said in a determined voice.

When the ballots had been counted, she said, the volunteers followed them to the town registrar, with plans to sleep in the town hall that night to protect the votes.

“But we were told to evaporate,” Sanchez recalled. “That’s what they said, evaporate.”

Nuns Copied Tally

Fearing violence if they stayed--and comforted that she and a nun had secreted copies of at least two precinct tally sheets in their clothing--Sanchez led her volunteers to the town church.

Others were still at the polling places as late as 10 p.m., in a dark town on streets they did not know. Sarmiento dispatched aides to lead them to the church. Within the building, the volunteers were too nervous or excited to sleep. At 8 p.m., Sarmiento said, a jeep carrying four men armed with rifles began circling the church grounds.

“Our boys were so worried about us (women),” said Sanchez. “They pushed the benches, the pews, against the doors. We prayed a lot.”

When daybreak came, she said, a group of national police, dispatched by a sympathetic officer in Cebu, arrived at the church and escorted the volunteers back to the capital. With Sanchez in the convoy were her daughters, Chinky and Bedette.

“I’m glad they were with us,” she said. “I would have worried more if they stayed home, not knowing where their mother was.”

Would they do it again?

Purita Sanchez: “Yes. I feel it’s only NAMFREL that can clean up elections.”

Julito Sarmiento: “Always.”

Chinky Sanchez: “Next week.”