Tuesday, May 15, 2007 C-Cimpel shifts work to parallel quick count By Nancy R. Cudis Sun.Star Correspondent
ELECTION returns began arriving last night at the headquarters of C-Cimpel while the election monitoring group shifted its energy from assisting voters and guarding the votes, to conducting a parallel count of election results.
Based on C-Cimpel’s reports from the field, the most serious problems were a shooting alarm in Barangay Pakulo, Dumanjug town, which prompted authorities to transfer the counting of votes to the poblacion; and C-Cimpel’s loss of 15 recently trained pollwatchers to political parties who allegedly paid them P2,000 each.
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines has authorized C-Cimpel to do the quick count. The operation will involve at least 25 accredited accountants, 120 accounting students using 22 computers.
Generally peaceful
As of 10:30 last night, ERs from only 19 precincts reached the Cebu-Citizens’ Involvement and Maturation in People’s Empowerment and Liberation’s (C-Cimpel) headquarters in the Caritas office in Cebu City.
C-Cimpel said the electoral exercise in most towns and municipalities was generally peaceful although there were incidents that the group has still to verify.
Aside from the shooting incident in Dumanjug town, C-Cimpel’s Msgr. Roberto Alesna, also chairman of the Cebu Archdiocesan Commission on Worship, said that in Barangay Jagobiao, Mandaue City, a barangay captain was caught near the precincts whispering to the voters the name of the party he belongs to.
Two lawyers of Tribu Guardo were said to have entered one of the precincts in Toong, Buhisan, Cebu City and insisted that they look at the list of voters who have not yet cast their ballots. But they were not allowed by the school principal.
The rest of the towns and municipalities were reported to have peaceful elections even in Bantayan Island, which is under Comelec control.
“Our monitoring team in Bantayan reported a peaceful election. This was confirmed by our legal team headed by Atty. Mike Yu.
What needed to be implemented was strictly done, with the presence of the Philippine National Police and the military,” Alesna said.
P2T offer
But C-Cimpel noted a loss of volunteers owing to political recruitment.
Out of 200 volunteers the election watchdog trained last week for pollwatching, 15 were taken by political parties after the latter offered P2,000 for each of them.
“We at C-Cimpel hope that they will keep with them the values we taught,” Alesna said.
