Gaming Philippine Democracy
/It was in fact Goebbel’s boss who in his 1925 book Mein Kampf coined the German phrase große Lüge (the “big lie”). He blamed Germany's World War I loss to a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. His big lie fueled the Nazi movement, the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, eventually leading to the Holocaust.
The term was re-introduced to describe President Donald Trump's attempts to smear the 2020 United States presidential election. His insistent cry of massive voter fraud in, ironically, Republican-controlled states, led his rabid supporters to mount the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
In the Philippines, our version of the big lie is the incessant claim that someone was cheated in the 2016 Vice Presidential elections.
Evolution of Cheating
How has cheating occurred in Philippine elections? Let me count the ways.
1. Vote buying has occurred directly and indirectly. The transaction is consummated not only during the days before an election but through the regular “ayuda” (help) provided for special occasions throughout the year.
Mandaluyong voters receive $300 for votes. The money was turned over the police as evidence (Photo by Boy Santos/ Philstar).
2. Deploying “flying” and “resurrected” voters who are paid to vote more than once, in place of another voter or someone who has passed away.
3. Voter suppression which includes removal of names from the voters’ list and transferring their voting precincts on election day as well as coercing and intimidating voters to just stay home.
Voters checking for their names at the polling places (Photo by Mark Crisitino/Rappler)
4. Dagdag/bawas, literally “add and subtract,” involves the transfer of one candidate’s votes to another which takes place during manual counting and tabulation of votes. This is the mortal sin in an election as the wrongdoer not only takes away but actually changes a vote and does so in wholesale fashion.
These methods occur at the local level when politicians use “guns, goons, and gold” to achieve their self-serving agenda. But the use of an automated election system starting in 2010 rendered the “dagdag/bawas” virtually impossible.
For the 2022 elections, the gaming of our democracy has begun early -- in the guise of a massive social media disinformation campaign as a prelude to the 2016 elections.
Surveys
The Social Weather Station (SWS) and Pulse Asia surveys conducted several days before the May 9, 2016 elections were fairly accurate.
Both surveys predicted that Mayor Rodrigo Duterte would win while Senators Mar Roxas and Grace Poe would receive approximately 21% each.
Presidential contenders during the 2016 elections: Rodrigo Duterte (left) and Mar Roxas
For the Vice Presidential race, the SWS’ May 1-3 survey showed Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Representative Leni Robredo in a statistical tie capturing 29% and 28%, respectively.
Note, however, that in the previous SWS survey conducted from April 18-20, Robredo jumped 7 percentage points to 26% catching up with Marcos’ 25%.
In the Pulse Asia survey conducted from April 26-29, it was Robredo leading at 30% as against Marcos’ 28%, a statistical tie given the margin of error.
Vice Presidential candidates in 2016 (and next year’s presidential contenders): Bongbong Marcos and Leni Robredo.
So, it was no surprise that Duterte won by a wide margin while the vice presidential race was neck and neck. Surveys conducted by credible polling firms serve as a check on election results.
Early lead
A frequent lament from the Marcos camp is that they were ahead by close to a million votes at the start of the counting but the lead “magically” evaporated overnight. There was no magic but logic. The votes that were transmitted first came from nearby areas in the National Capital Region and Luzon where the mobile signal was stronger. These were areas where Marcos was polling better than Robredo. But when the results from the Bicol region, Visayas, and Mindanao started to come in, Robredo caught up and eventually overtook Marcos.
Let me address the specific allegation that a script change rigged the elections in favor of Robredo. By way of background, a reporter observed that an “ñ,” as it appeared in certain candidates’ names such as Roy Señeres appeared as a question mark when displayed (i.e., Roy Se?eres).
Smartmatic’s technical team led by Marlon Garcia verified the error and corrected the “?” to an “ñ.” Garcia announced the change to all the watchers inside the Transparency Server Room and no one objected.
The change in the code was cosmetic and did not, in any way, modify the election results. The correction did not alter the values in the transmission of votes from the Vote Counting Machines (VCM) to the servers. The results in fact conformed with the printed election returns of all the VCMs.
Presidential Electoral Tribunal
In the final Congressional tally, Robredo won by 263,473 votes.
On June 29, 2016, Marcos sought to set aside Robredo’s win with the 15-member Supreme Court sitting as the Presidential Election Tribunal (PET), claiming there was “clear and convincing evidence of what is now known as the biggest electoral fraud in the history of the Philippines.”
Under the PET’s rules, an election protestant must identify three pilot provinces where the cheating allegedly occurred. Marcos chose Iloilo, Camarines Sur, and Negros Oriental.
On Oct 18, 2019, after a tedious process of manually recounting over two million votes covering 5,415 precincts in the three provinces, the PET found not only was there NO cheating uncovered, but Robredo’s lead over Marcos even grew by 15,093. There was an increase in Leni votes because the PET opted for a 25% shading threshold instead of the Comelec’s 50% standard threshold.
“A frequent lament from the Marcos camp is that they were ahead by close to a million votes at the start of the counting but the lead “magically” evaporated overnight. There was no magic but logic.”
Marcos then urged the PET to investigate ballots in Lanao del Sur, Basilan, and Maguindanao.
The PET took over four (4) years to carefully assess the evidence and consider the merits of Marcos’ claim. On February 16, 2021, the PET’s 15 justices, 13 of whom were Duterte appointees, unanimously dismissed the petition. The PET’s 93-page ruling stressed that the protestant “made sweeping allegations of wrongdoing and submitted incomplete and incorrect data yet failed to substantiate his allegations of massive anomalies and irregularities.” And to proceed to an investigation in the Mindanao provinces if the recount of votes in the pilot provinces had already failed “would amount to a fishing expedition.”
Despite a unanimous Supreme Court’s unequivocal finding that allegations of cheating are unsubstantiated, the big lie persists, propagated through a “resource-full” social media disinformation apparatus.
***
Hitler’s “big lie” idea uttered close to a hundred years ago remains relevant today:
“Even though the facts which prove this [the big lie] to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think there may be some other explanation…. because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.”
Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard rightly observed: “There are two ways to be fooled: One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
As the May 2022 election approaches, may our voters hold fast to factual truths and resist the unconscious corruption of falsehoods promoted by those that seek to game Philippine democracy.
*Before serving as chairperson of the Philippine Commission on Elections (2015-17) and Presidential Commission on Good Government (2010-15) the agency tasked to recover the Marcos ill-gotten wealth, Andy Bautista worked with two international law firms in New York and Hong Kong (1993-2006). He also served as dean of the Far Eastern University Institute of Law (1999-2013).
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