failure of democracy in daguioman

My Personal Account

The mayoral problem

The mayoral couple had been in power in Daguioman municipality for 12 years. The husband for two terms and the wife for another two. “Winning” this year’s elections gives the wife another term in office. Before the couple’s ascendancy to power, the wife’s father was mayor for two or three terms before he died. Some people say they were not abusive during their first term in office. But because absolute power corrupts absolutely, the Daguioman tragedy, thus, began,

Daguioman’s story is really no different from what we often hear in the news: a family ruling for so many years, executive power transfers from father to mother to son or daughter. Power derived through cheating and vote-buying.

But Daguioman’s case is special in my eyes for an obvious reason. The ruling family are primarily low lander Chinese-Ilokano while the ruled are the Tingguians, a Cordilleran indigenous minority. This is why it hurts so much whenever any of the mayoral family goes about threatening, coercing and hurting residents who refuse to bow to their biddings. Or whenever I hear of anyone there who cannot claim their pawned land back because the couple refuses to accept payment or imposes 100% percent interest. The mayoral couple uses money, threats and guns, and pawned land as their leverage to make the people of Daguioman vote for them. Those who refuse to be bought or coerced, land the same faith as myself—receiving death threats and harassment.

I have so many Chinese friends whom I love so much. The couple I talk about here is of a different breed.

Satellite rule

There is no doctor. No medicines in the municipal clinic. The mayor and her family live in Bangued and rarely visit their constituents. Daguiomane is 60 kilometers of mostly-rough-roads away from Bangued. Daytime office hours at the Daguioman municipal hall, you will see employees either chatting or watching television. Most of the current municipal employees are casual, not permanent, another leverage to ensure votes.

You will not see employees overseeing an important municipal project, ever. Most of the roads and municipal building were built at the time of the wife’s father. If there are road works, they are just one or two here and there. On several occasions, residents allege that national and non-government projects such as reforestation and road works did not push through simply because the mayoral couple refuses anyone who would not transfer project funds into their hands.

Awakening

I turned a blind eye to all these until I fell victim to mayoral corruption and abuse. It was after the July 2004 typhoon Igme that I planned to bring a medical mission to Daguioman. Typhoon Igme washed out a third of all the rice fields and destroyed roads leading to Bangued. The mayor did not visit her constituents right after the typhoon. She visited weeks after, once via helicopter and that’s it. Seeing this, I decided to organize a medical mission to Daguioman. I raised funds through a concert in Manila and used the proceeds to fund the transportation of doctors and students of the medicine school of Saint Louie University in Baguio City. I wrote the mayor and her councilors about this medical mission. The councilors were verbally appreciative while the mayor and her husband forbade me from pushing through with bringing doctors, medicines and rice supply to Daguioman. The mayoral couple gave the condition that I should dispose the funds and medicines into their hands and cancel the mission. After several attempts of explaining to them that Daguioman needs a medical mission, and finding that the couple are really hard on dissuading me, I decided to push through as planned. Even after prohibition, I still indicated the protocol “thanks to Mayor…” note in my medical missions streamers. 16-18 October 2004 were medical mission days, the mayor prohibited people from participating and having themselves medically checked by the mission doctors. But, still, many people came. We spent half-day missions in the four barangays of Daguioman and exhausted all the medicines for the people. The mission did not cure all ailments, but it did help cure the hopelessness. I did a rice distribution mission after that, in December of the same year.

During and after the missions, I had been branded a communist, pointing to my being University of the Philippines student as “proof.” I once cried in a town plaza meeting while explaining to the accusers that I am not communist or an NPA, I am just a concerned citizen willing to bring help. I have told that several times to the town police but I am not sure if they hear me right or they refuse to hear me at all.

Inevitable witness

Come election time May 2007, I did what ordinary citizens would do. I campaigned for the candidates I believe would really help Daguioman. My husband joined the ticket as councilor-candidate with Lyndon Basingan, a respected elder in Daguioman, as mayoral candidate.

And there went the Cokue family again, they did what they did and did. For the past elections, vote buying and coercion have been their game. The people themselves alleged that the couple buys out key people in the Board of Election Inspectors (BEI), the municipal COMELEC officer, and most of the local police. In the May 2004 elections, I was a mere voter. May 2007, I was a wife of a candidate and, more importantly, a poll watcher.

Being a poll watcher pushed me to video document and capture just some of the anomalies. Daguioman municipality has only a thousand plus voters. Here, you see, monitoring who votes whom in what polling precinct is quite easy. Coercive business negotiations provide the template for this. Elections have become a risky but overcompensating business. You have the right amount of investment--money, guns and goons-- you secure a business empire that steadily rakes profit from the municipal Internal Revenue Allocation.

Similar to their tactic for the May 2004 elections, the husband and wife mayoral couple both filed candidacy. Right before the elections, the husband withdrew.

Unlike in May 2004 where the bought voters had their own codes, e.g. “batman,” “papaitan ni josie” written on the ballots to indicate that they fulfilled their part of the contract, the bought voters for May 2007 were asked to allow the couple’s poll watchers as well as some of the bought BEIs see what they wrote in their ballots, before depositing it in the ballot box. Such scheme was obvious when on May 14, in precincts 3a and 7a, the secrecy folders were laid down such that poll watchers would indeed see what voters write. In precincts 1a and 2a where secrecy folders were up, the voting booths and watchers were placed in a way that watchers would still see what voters write.

About the bought voters, BEIs and COMELEC officer, it seems that the pattern of persuasion, especially for the last two, is be bought or be dead. Who would not accept money given by force? Refusal is like a sentence of possible death.

The rise of the vote contractors

What bothers me more is how some natural community leaders aid in propagating the political business empire. They have become contractors and subcontractors in buying votes. A community leader is made to promise a specific amount of votes in exchange for a specific amount of money.

More than the vote-coercion, vote –buying and systemic cheating, the core trouble in Daguioman is the grabbing of land. Without paid work, a doctor to consult and medicines to use, many farmers in Daguioman are forced to pawn their lands to the mayor’s family. Once pawned, farmers are not able to redeem their land even if appropriate payment is being given simply because the mayor and her husband refuse to accept the payment. Some farmers fear that their land had already been titled to the mayor’s children. The indigenous customary law, including the elder system, has been abolished. The traditional law of pawning of land has been trashed by the mayoral couple. I hate to see the day when indigenous farmers are left with no land to till because the land they and their ancestors own are in the hands of the lowland Chinese Ilokano, who have traces of Tingguian blood. I am not invoking fundamentalism but fearing its inevitable rise because racism and ethnicism are just too blatant.

Cultural loss

Tragic would be the day when most of the people in Daguioman have no longer identified with their own cultural identity because someone from the lowland have imposed their own greed as law. Diminishing culture and identity forces others to leave Daguioman and re-settle in other places. Those who remain either allow themselves to be used or suffer the persecution of not being bought. Physical and emotional displacement is cultural displacement. If indigenous dignity has been marred, who would dance the romantic Tadek or collective Changa-i then? Who would deliver a heart-felt Oggayam or teach the young ones with Ading? Some would still, but with money in their hearts and guns in their mouths.

Footage

The videos I took were simply to aid in the big story of what is really happening in Daguioman. Flaws in election process, illegal disqualification of a watcher, omissions in ballot numbers, verbal and physical harassment of people who refuse to be bought, assault and death threats to a poll watcher--these are merely snippets of what I and so many other people in Daguioman experience and witness.

Some of the footage have already been aired at the 6:30 p.m. TV Patrol World channel 2 and 10:00 p.m.World Tonight at ANC, yesterday, May 17. Articles about my plight were also posted at Inquirer and ABSCBN Interactive. Please note one error in the Inquirer article, it was the son of the mayor, not the husband, who publicly issued a death threat at me. But please note that the husband is the mastermind of all these schemes. A genius of tricks. I just hope I could surpass that with my will to expose such tricks.