Philippine Midterm Elections: Is Duterte’s Win Democracy’s Loss?

On May 13, the Philippines held widely anticipated midterm elections seen as a referendum on controversial Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. While Duterte’s allies may have won at the polls, their victory has also raised questions about the way democracy is exercised in the Philippines more generally.

Candidates belonging to the coalition endorsed by Duterte won in the Senate amid reports of widespread vote tampering and other irregularities documented on election day. Election monitoring groups said there were more cases of faulty vote counting machines this year compared to the 2016 election. Local poll officials solved the issue by replacing the malfunctioning machines, but this caused a delay that may have disenfranchised some voters.

Aside from the higher number of unreliable voting machines, there were other issues that affected voting in many places, such as defective digital cards, pre-shaded ballots, inferior markers, mismatches between voter receipts and ballots, and power outages in some towns.

Some experts and election watchdogs also questioned the seven-hour delay in the transmission of results from polling centers to the so-called transparency server of the government’s election body. This happened an hour after the closing of polls on election day. What this meant was that for seven hours the results based on the actual election returns were not shown to the public. When the online server was finally made accessible, more than 90 percent of the votes were already tabulated without any opposition candidate making it to the winning list of senators. Election authorities said the delay was caused by a technical glitch, but critics are not convinced and warned that the seven-hour lapse was sufficient time to manipulate the election results.

“We demand an immediate explanation as to the reasons behind this delay in the release. Nearly zero results. Zero explanation. Completely and totally unacceptable,” said Senator Francis Pangilinan, a member of the opposition.

In an editorial, the Philippine Daily Inquirer questioned the the competence of the government’s election body: “Voters of whatever political stripe have every right to feel incensed, and incredulous, at the Comelec’s [Commission on Election] foul-ups, the lot of which appears to be the result of glaringly inadequate preparation and lack of foresight.”

As expected, Palace officials cited the results in the Senate race to crow about the enduring “Duterte magic” and the overwhelming fresh mandate given by voters to the ruling party. They also highlighted the victory of the police general who enforced the notorious war on drugs as proof of public support for the president despite broad opposition to the human rights abuses allegedly perpetrated by state forces.

Presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo said the results showed that Filipinos “yearn for stability and continuity of the genuine reforms that the administration started.”

“They yearn for a constructive – not obstructionist – Senate which will help in crafting the President’s legislative agenda,” he added.

But unlike in previous elections, several citizen monitoring groups have expressed doubts about the credibility of the recent midterm polls. They wanted an independent probe of the irregularities that marred the voting in many places and the long delay in the transmission of results. They also decried the continuing use of electoral practices that undermined the process such as vote buying, excessive spending by some candidates, and the partisan electioneering activities of civil servants.

Activists accused the police and military of engaging in the prohibited act of conducting propaganda in favor of or against individual candidates by distributing campaign materials that demonized Leftist parties. They added that state-backed forces had been aggressive in harassing Leftist candidates and their supporters during the campaign period.

It’s unlikely that the Senate will conduct a formal inquiry about the reported issues of cheating and illegal campaigning in the midterm polls. The new Senate will not convene until the last week of July, and, surprisingly, the opposition coalition has quickly conceded by acknowledging the results of the race.

But a broad formation of citizens demanding truth and transparency has gathered a lot of support too. Civil society leaders said the recent election was the worst and dirtiest since 2004, when former President Gloria Arroyo was accused of directing election officials to assure her wide lead over her rival.

This is the fourth time that the country has adopted the Automated Election System to solve the problem of slow counting and vote tampering linked to manual elections. The past three elections led to a smooth transition of power because the results were widely accepted by most political forces. Duterte’s party has succeeded in dominating the midterm polls. But the cost is a loss of confidence in the reliability of the Automated Election System to deliver a clean and honest voting process.