URL originale : https://books.openedition.org/irasec/7637
The 2022 Philippines Elections: Unity, Continuity, and Impunity
p. 11-18
Résumé
Despite the overwhelming support for the winning candidate and the unprecedented speed of transmission of votes, there remains allegations of fraud in the 2022 elections. Calls for a shift for a hybrid system, the Commission Elections held an Election Summit with various stakeholders present to discuss electoral reform issues. This presentation focuses on the examination of election administration during the 2022 Philippine general election. Specifically on the constitutional commission mandated to deliver free and fair elections, the Commission on Elections (COMELEC). In this paper, the following will be examined, the election management performance of the COMELEC in the 2022 election, the issues of capacity and autonomy encountered, and the lack of authoritative voice on matters of election management shaped the conduct of election. By pushing the analysis on autonomy and capacity, COMELEC’s lack of authoritative voice and decisive actions as a constitutionally independent body led to its inability to mitigate the challenges concerning election administration in the Philippines. However, it is worth noting that the public satisfaction of COMELEC is high. As the referee and gatekeeper of the electoral arena, it is crucial for COMELEC to resolve issues surrounding its autonomy and capacity in order to administer elections with integrity and address perceptions and allegations of fraud.
Entrées d’index
Mots-clés : Philippines, Marcos Jr., Duterte, dynasties politiques, UNITY, COMELEC
Index géographique : Philippines
Keywords : Philippines, Marcos Jr., Duterte, political dynasties, UNITY, COMELEC
Texte intégral
1Elections in the Philippines are free but not necessarily fair or competitive. The high cost of campaign finance in the Philippines limits running for public office to very few. Estimates of campaign expenditure to run for President in the Philippines range from 5 to 50 billion ₱ (90 million to 900 million US$). Candidates submit a Statement of Contributions and Expenses (SOCE) to the election commission. Many candidates are suspected to under-declare their expenditures to keep to the maximum required by law or not to divulge their campaign strategy and costs. Based on their SOCE in 2019, on average, senatorial candidates spent 190 million ₱ (3.6 million US$) on political advertisements. In 2022, one senatorial candidate spent 245 million ₱ (4.4 million US$)1. These staggering amounts of money starkly contrast with a Filipino family’s average annual income of 313,000 ₱ (5,400 US$)2. The rising cost of election campaigns favours incumbents with access to the patronage that flows from national political elites down to significant local political players. There is an increasing number of dynastic families in Congress and across different positions in local government. Filipino economists label these dynasties as “obese,” “fat,” and “thin” dynasties (Mendoza, Juminola, and Yap 2019: 8-9). Election, originally meant to provide a change in leadership, appears to be a platform of clan continuity in the Philippines. Political families dominate the Philippine political landscape for decades.
2Observers of Philippine politics have seen the fall of democracy with Marcos Sr. declaring martial law in 1972, the restoration of democracy in 1986 with Corazon Aquino, and the decline of democracy with the violent populist of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and now the return of the Marcos name with the overwhelming victory of Marcos Jr. One way to make sense of where we are and why we are where we are is through the lens of election administration and how a democratic institution such as an independent election commission falls short in protecting the democratic space and make it a level playing field for all. Elections are essential to a democracy. Analyses of elections are typically directed toward understanding electoral outcomes rather than the electoral process. The electoral process shapes the dynamics and outcomes of elections. The electoral process matters because the administration of elections cues how free and fair the election is and will be.
When Dynasties Unite
3In the 2022 Philippine elections, the results that showed the large margin of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. surprised many. Perhaps most especially observers from outside the Philippines who still remember the ouster of the Marcoses from Malacanang palace. It seemed unimaginable to have, yet again, a Marcos as President. Since the last time much of the world heard of the Marcos family name, it was associated with dictatorship, human rights abuses, images of excesses and a lifestyle so remote to the poverty-stricken country it was running as President3.
4Much has been written and said about historical revisionism alongside social media campaigns that utilized disinformation and organized troll farms. Much has also been said about the disillusionment towards the failed promises that should have come with liberal democracy in 1986. As previously mentioned, elections in the Philippines are often more about continuity than a change of guard. A recently published article shows evidence that voters saw Marcos Jr. as the continuity of the very popular strongman Rodrigo Duterte and the continuity to Marcos Sr., his father’s legacy, also strongman rule (Dulay, Hicken, Menon, Holmes 2022: 482-484). The study also shows that Filipinos voted along ethnic lines. The North, bailiwick of the Marcoses, and the South, bailiwick of the Dutertes, voted for the Bongbong Marcos-Sara Duterte UNITY Team as President and vice president, respectively.
5However, this UNITY is a coalition of convenience. Dynastic families holding on together until they get through the election. Once the election is over, it will be politics as usual. The UNITY team already shows that it is frayed and rife with factions. In May 2023, one year after the elections, Sara Duterte resigned as chairperson of the Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats (Lakas-CMD) political party, citing “political toxicity and political power play”4. There were insinuations that Sara Duterte sided with former President, now congresswoman Gloria Arroyo who was relegated from senior deputy speaker to deputy speaker. There were allegations of a coup against Speaker of the House Martin Romualdez in the lower house5. Romualdez is the President’s first cousin and the National President of Lakas-CMD. In the coming months, we can expect more challenges to the united team of Marcos and Duterte. The mid-term elections in 2025 will test loyalties and reveal alliances. It will show signs of what to expect for the 2028 national elections. It will be the same players. But with different principals and party affiliations.
Electoral Fairness and Credible Authority
6Some civil society members perceive electoral fraud in the 2022 elections, but these claims have not been substantiated and remain as allegations. However, the Commission on Elections (COMELEC), the country’s official Election Management Body (EMB), could have better managed the entire electoral process. On election day, voters in multiple voting precincts waited in line for three to four hours to cast their ballots. The concern is not just management on the polling day itself. The COMELEC could have secured the integrity of the entire electoral process.
7The COMELEC is one of the oldest election commissions in the region. However, the prevalence of vote-buying and patronage disbursement between candidates, supporters, and voters persists, as do allegations of fraud and clientelistic appointments to the Commission on Elections that remain unresolved through multiple election cycles (Calimbahin, 2011).
8Despite its label as a constitutional body, the COMELEC is both a bureaucracy and constitutional commission that is, over time, plagued by a three-pronged pathology composed of two types of clientelism and organisational inefficiency. The first deficiency of COMELEC is its vulnerability to external clientelism, in which the patron-candidate, a political-economic elite, looks to acquire favourable election outcomes (Ibid: 110). The second deficiency is internally motivated clientelism, where the patron is within the bureaucracy. They act as “entrepreneurial bureaucrats” using their knowledge and network of bureaucrats in exchange for career or financial enrichment (Ibid: 113). Lastly, organisational inefficiency refers to the incapacities of the poll body to enforce the rules thoroughly and effectively. Understanding this three-pronged pathology of the COMELEC allows one to see “the bifurcated expectations of the voting public—high normative expectation as a constitutional commission and low-performance expectation as a bureaucracy responsible for election management” (Ibid: 105).
The Conduct of the 2022 Elections
9COMELEC’s performance in the 2022 Philippine general election is less about fraud and more about organisational efficiency and capacity issues. Two months before the elections, three out of seven commissioners were appointed. For any organisation, leadership changes right before a critical period is challenging. Likewise, personnel changes in the COMELEC field offices occurred one week before election day. The changes included newly appointed roles and new area assignments. Affected officials, such as some Provincial Board of Canvassers, Provincial Election Supervisors, and Election Officers, have vital roles in the lead-up and on election day. The disruption this caused in the Election Management Body’s preparation led to one commissioner publicly disagreeing with this last-minute re-organisation and another commissioner publicly saying it was illegal6. The re-shuffling of field personnel does not help alleviate staff and resource issues that affect the monitoring and implementation of electoral administration rules before, during, and after election day.
10The 2022 general election saw multiple substitutions and withdrawals leading to election day. Substitutions have become a strategy at national-level positions. The COMELEC appears like a bystander, unable to control what is clearly undermining the electoral system. Campaign finance issues continue to hound the COMELEC. Effectively monitoring campaign expenditures is one way to disqualify over spenders and examine campaign contributors. The Omnibus Election Code requires candidates to submit their “full, true, and itemized” election-related statement of contributions and expenditures to the COMELEC. However, the Campaign Finance Office does not have regular employees and should include accountants who are certified fraud examiners (Ilagan and Simon, 2021). Another issue that persists is election violence. The deputized agency of the COMELEC for security, peace, and order is the Philippine National Police. An alarming pattern that needs more attention is the increasing violence and killings of COMELEC personnel, including election officers, after the conduct of elections. Issues of capacity and more effective administration in an election commission can be remedied with better resource allocation, training, and public management reform. The issue of autonomy is difficult to remedy if there is elite capture and the independence of the election commission is undermined by appointments that the public perceives as partisan.
11In the 2022 elections, the COMELEC comprised five commissioners, out of the seven, from Mindanao. Former president Duterte’s support comes from that region. Two of the seven commissioners were from the same Law School as former president Duterte. Moreover, one commissioner is an election lawyer representing two 2022 presidential candidates, Marcos Jr., and Isko Moreno. Because the COMELEC has adjudication duties, the public perceived some partisanship when the commission ruled on the candidacy of Bongbong Marcos. Petitioners filed a disqualification case on the candidacy of Marcos Jr due to a guilty verdict for non-payment and filing of income tax. At the same time, he was still a Governor of Ilocos Norte. The case took longer to resolve and involved a public disagreement between and among commissioners. Insinuations of clientelistic relationships between a commissioner and a pro-administration Senator were lobbed by an election commissioner set to retire one month before the May 2022 elections7. The very public spat among COMELEC commissioners, including accusations of partisan ruling in favour of a candidate, erodes voter confidence in an election management body. Perception of autonomy in an election commission is equally essential as conducting fraud-free elections.
Filipino Voters and the 2022 Elections
12During election season, a pejorative goes around in social media, characterising voters as ill-informed and not understanding how democracy works for selling their votes to corrupt politicians. The prevalence of vote-buying, after all, offends middle-class sensibilities. Labels for voters who cannot afford to refuse payoffs in exchange for their vote further alienate and breed distaste for liberal democratic ideals. Push-back includes accusations of elitism, further polarising Philippine society. A society that now barely sees any cross-class civil society action.
13The popularity of Rodrigo Duterte, despite his very violent drug war and the majority win of Marcos Jr., a name associated with his father’s authoritarian rule, has led to the question, are Filipino voters becoming illiberal? (Kasuya and Calimbahin, 2023) Research findings show that at the baseline, Filipinos continue to support democracy but are contingent supporters of authoritarian rulers. The long-term impact of this contingent support for an illiberal rule is the weakening of democratic institutions, especially accountability institutions. The lack of demand for accountability and the enforcement of oversight functions can lead to impunity.
14Social Weather Station survey findings show Filipinos are satisfied with democracy. From 1991 to the fourth quarter of 2022, Filipinos responded that they were satisfied with how democracy works. In 2022, 89% responded as satisfied with democracy8. Similarly, from 1998 to 2022, respondents gave COMELEC an “excellent” net satisfaction rating. There is an observation that COMELEC exceeds the public’s low expectations (Calimbahin, 2011). Or is it possible that voters are willing to make do with a defective democracy?
Increasing Electoral Integrity: Challenges to Election Officials
15The COMELEC is mandated to lead the electoral process with integrity and credibility. However, for this to be a reality, the pace of reforms within the commission needs to pick up. The reforms should combine administrative reforms that do not require constitutional change, an appointment framework that will require constitutional change, and reforms through legislative action.
16One possible area of reform is the decoupling of the administration and adjudication duties of the commission. This can address issues of compromised capacity. Experts on election administration can work alongside election law experts who will address electoral cases. Decoupling will mean faster adjudication decisions and a more focused election management body that can build expertise on all matters related to elections, not just crisis managers.
17Second, appointments matter. Given the nature of elections, electoral integrity requires non-partisanship among those who lead an election management body. In an increasingly polarised environment, the mere perception of fraud can encourage and justify actions leading to political instability.
18The new leadership in the Commission on Elections is reaching out to electoral reform advocates and is more visible in explaining election matters to the public. These are all promising signs. The youth council elections in October 2023 and the upcoming mid-term elections are worth observing if election officials are serious about promoting electoral integrity and addressing election administration concerns.
Bibliographie
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Bibliography
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Notes de bas de page
1 Dwight de Leon, “Candidates who spent the most based on their SOCEs”, Rappler, July 14, 2022.
2 Philippine Statistics Authority, “2018 Family Income and Expenditure Survey”, June 4, 2020, https://psa.gov.ph/sites/default/files/FIES%202018%20Final%20Report.pdf, retrieved on June 27, 2023.
3 Pangalangan, R.C., 2021. Human Rights Cases from the Marcos Dictatorship. In Philippine Materials in International Law (pp. 262-308). Brill Nijhoff.
4 Daphne Galvez, “Sara Duterte Resigns from Lakas-CMD”, The Philippine Daily Inquirer, May 19, 2023.
5 Ellson Quismorio, “Arroyo responds to alleged coup plot vs Romualdez, says she’s dropping ‘ambition’ to be Speaker again”, Manila Bulletin, May 18, 2023.
6 Dhel Nazario, “Reshuffling gov’t personnel before elections without Comelec consent illegal – Garcia”, The Manila Bulletin, May 6, 2022
7 CNN Philippines Staff, “Guanzon: Delay of DQ case ‘a grand design’ in Marcos’ favor”, CNN Philippines, February 2, 2022.
8 See SWS website for the “2023 SWS Survey Review”.
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