CEBU, Philippines - The International Observers Mission congratulated the Commission on Elections-7 and the police for doing a good job during the first-ever automated polls in the country but also said they observed some discrepancies.
Based on their observation, they said the Comelec was prepared for the elections despite all the rumors that the polls will be suspended.
They also said the Philippine National Police planned well for the peace and order. The group also thanked politicians, political parties Comelec officials and the PNP for being accommodating to them.
On the other hand, the group also said they found that vote buying was rampant.
“It seems that ‘vote buying’ is seen as a normal thing,” they said in their observation.
The IOM team leader, Michael Rekordet, said this was also true in Cebu City although politicians did it secretly and in other forms. The team also said they consider the giving of health cards vote buying especially if a politician will do it before the election time.
The group suggested there should be a strict implementation and enforcement of the law regarding vote buying.
Another negative observation was that ballot secrecy was not guaranteed as they saw some watchers of politicians actually help in feeding ballots into the Precinct Counter Optical Scan machines.
Meanwhile, regarding the priority numbers given out during the elections, the IOM observed that it was a good for maintaining the sequence of people who came first but unfortunately they observed that some people who already had a priority number still go to other places and were not there when they were called.
Despite all the problems the IOM said the automated polls here in the region was a success.
The IOM also said their observations hold only for the Central Visayas and not the whole Philippines as they have other IOM teams assigned to the other regions of the country with their own observations. (FREEMAN NEWS)