2016 polls 'more violent,' says monitor

MANILA, Philippines — With an apparent increase in election-related human rights violations, an election watchdog said Monday that this year's national and local polls appeared to be more violent than in recent elections.

Rona Ann Caritos, executive director of the Legal Network for Truthful Elections (LENTE), said they have seen a spike in reports of election-related human rights violations in days leading to the elections.

As of 1:30 p.m., more than 230 cases of election-related offenses have already been reported to the monitoring center of Bantay Karapatan sa Halalan (BKH) at the main office of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR).

Caritos said among the incidents reported included cases of shooting or ambush, such as the one in Cavite before dawn yesterday that claimed the lives of seven people.

Other incidents include attacks on polling precincts, threats and intimidation of voters, vote buying, and distribution of sample ballots.

LENTE also noted incidents of voter disenfranchisement due to problems in the vote-counting machines (VCMs).

"This is a more violent elections," she told The STAR. "The numbers are really different."

CHR chairman Chito Gascon said they are still in the process of verifying the reports that their volunteers have monitored.

"These are raw reports, what we are doing is that we are verifying and validating," he added.

BKH is an initiative of CHR and the Commission on Elections (Comelec), in partnership with human rights groups and election monitors, to look into cases of election-related human rights violations.

In its report on May 3, BKH said that it has confirmed 53 victims of election-related human rights violations, including 22 who were killed in connection with the upcoming polls.

An updated report is expected to be released later this week.

Under an agreement with Comelec, CHR will be able to file complaints against those monitored to have committed election-related human rights offenses.

"As watchdog institutions, we need to send the signal to perpetrators… that they can’t do that. There are rules, there are expected behavior and if they cross the line, we call them out," he said.

Caritos said they are hoping that the prosecution rate of violators of election-related offenses will increase with the intervention provided by CHR.