The Abalos Comelec: A legacy of scandals and eroded credibility

The Abalos Comelec: A legacy of scandals and eroded credibility
Posted by: Alecks P. Pabico | October 3, 2007 at 3:28 pm


BENJAMIN Abalos Sr.’s decision to resign from the Commission on Elections, many believe, can only herald auspicious times for the constitutionally mandated guardian of the ballot. After all, the poll body’s credibility, integrity and independence had suffered the most under his leadership.

In the words of an election official who has seen poll commissioners come and go since 1998, Abalos “came and took away everything: word of honor, integrity, independence, credibility. He left no legacy except resignation to free the Comelec from the stigma of his name and fight his accusers with his own face.”

That may be a harsh assessment, but to begin with, Abalos, a former Mandaluyong judge and mayor, and head of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, came to the Comelec in the most unusual of circumstances. He was appointed its chairman despite being a politician with acknowledged ties to the First Family, and no less a card-carrying member of the dominant political party, Lakas, at the time.

To be fair though, Abalos was not the only controversial Comelec official appointed by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. There were, of course, her two ad interim commissioners who did not get congressional confirmation: Manuel Barcelona Jr. and Virgilio Garcillano, the Marcos-era election director accused of masterminding dagdag-bawas operations in Mindanao and eventual presidential phone pal of the “Hello, Garci” tapes infamy.

Yet while the Comelec in the post-Edsa years has been no stranger to adverse public perception owing to allegations of corruption, incompetence, and partisanship, it was during Abalos’s watch that the poll body’s credibility had suffered a sharp decline. Under Abalos, the Comelec registered -17 (March 2006) and -10 (September 2006) net trust ratings from a high of +49 (February 2004) in surveys done by the Social Weather Stations.

It was also Abalos who had the lowest net trust rating among the post-Marcos Comelec chiefs: -7 in January 2004 and -10 in April 2004. Bernardo Pardo and Alfredo Benipayo only had -4 trust ratings during their terms.

Pulse Asia’s survey this August put Abalos’s net trust rating at -10 (24 percent trust and 34 percent distrust ratings). Prior to the 2007 midterm elections, he had a -1 net trust rating (39 percent trust and 40 percent distrust ratings) in the April 2007 survey. As MMDA chairman, he had a better net approval rating of +17 in Pulse Asia’s 2001 survey of Cabinet officials.

The public’s low regard and distrust of the Abalos Comelec can only be attributed to the scandals that tainted his incumbency. In the aftermath of the “Hello, Garci” scandal, a PCIJ report cited the glaring “mistakes” of the poll body that have run into billions of taxpayers’ money. The list includes the election modernization program that the Abalos Comelec bungled, resulting in P2.3 billion going to waste — P1.3 billion for the contract to purchase vote-counting machines that the Supreme Court invalidated, and another P1 billion for the voters validation system which was suspended in December 2003 in the absence of any budgetary allocation.

While the Comelec even during Christian Monsod’s time has been unable to insulate itself from the politics of accommodation, it got worse under Abalos. Some election officials rue how their professionalism and their being career officials suffered with the promotion of politicos and the corrupt during Abalos’s term. An obvious case in point, of course, is the present line-up of regional directors and assistant directors, which is a virtual who’s who of those who were implicated in the 2004 electoral fraud allegedly engineered by Malacañang to ensure Arroyo’s victory in the presidential polls.

The Comelec did not even bother to conduct a thorough investigation of the serious allegations, and even promoted these poll officials. So to no one’s surprise, the results of the 2007 midterm polls were, to a large extent, a repeat of the 2004 elections with the same officials implicated in voting results manipulation, particularly in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao. (see the PCIJ’s reports on the 2007 elections)

That is why electoral reform advocates have understandably expressed optimism that the Comelec will be able to start rebuilding its credibility with Abalos finally gone.

But there is a catch there, one that Monsod is correct to remind the ecstatic public. The former Comelec chief, who served during the Aquino administration and enjoyed consistent high satisfaction ratings, has always blamed the appointing power and Congress for contributing to the Comelec’s fall from grace — by appointing and confirming commissioners who serve their own agenda.

Any rebuilding of the Comelec, Monsod says, will only be as good as the appointments to be made by the President. “Now it is up to (her) to help in that rebuilding with quality appointments.”

That, however, begs this crucial question: Can Arroyo be trusted not to politicize the appointments of Comelec commissioners?