I'm a Filipino that has been working in the development sector here in Cambodia for almost 2 years now. I follow and appreciate your news service and would just like to comment on the article below on " Chaotic But Widespread Voting in the Philippines" which has reported several inaccuracies.
In particular, the following paragraph renders the report incredible:
"The Philippines, which has been a democracy since 1946, operates in a system of electoral anarchy, where folded papers are used as ballots and 10-year-old children vote in lieu of their parents, Keo Darith said."
As a matter of fact, in May of this year, the first automated elections for the Philippines (with computerized scanning and automatic tabulation of ballots) was successfully conducted. International election monitors and news agencies covered, validated and reported its relative success. And so I cannot imagine where Mr. Keo Darith has obtained his data or observations. "Folded papers...used as ballots" would simply not have been possible given the automated system and neither would the 10 year old proxies, as registration was computerized and in some areas even made use of bio-metric technologies.
Furthermore, democracy was only re-established in 1986 after 2-decades of the dictatorial rule of Ferdinand Marcos who imposed martial law and under whose term our democracy and our electoral system greatly suffered, along with the thousands of opposition party members, activists, and journalists who were abducted, tortured and killed by the Marcos administration and its proponents.
I hope the above points (easily verifiable by any credible on-line news facility) will help clarify these matters to your readers and will also alert the producers of Hello VOA to be more cautious in choosing resource persons of credibility for their radio show.
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