By Agnes Donato
Inquirer News Service, June 4, 2003
EVER critical of the way national elections are held, the University of the Philippines community is now facing a polls-related controversy of its own.
A group of UP alumni, headed by former assistant minister of agriculture Nelia Gonzalez, has accused its rival party of trying to rig this year’s UP Alumni Association elections.
Gonzalez’s so-called “Group of 21″ is running opposite another party, which allegedly controls the incumbent alumni association and is composed of members of the influential Upsilon Fraternity.
The chairperson and another member of the three-person Commission on Elections (Comelec) belong to the Upsilon Fraternity, Gonzalez claimed.
On April 15, the deadline for registration of votes, the group of Gonzalez brought envelopes with names, payments, application letters and authorization letters to register the prospective voters. But the group of lawyer Domingo Santiago submitted at the last minute two envelopes containing only the names of the alumni and their payments.
Gonzalez questioned the inclusion of Santiago’s list of 4,203 voters, which she claimed was submitted late, but for which the incumbent group allegedly paid over 500,000 pesos in membership fees.
She maintained that the persons in the list should not be allowed to cast votes, as the list did not contain the required details such as addresses, colleges or degrees earned from the university, nor the signatures of the persons in the list.
She added that the list even included names of several deceased persons and others whose ballots had already been obtained from the UPAA Secretariat by other persons.
“The submission of names without application and/or authorization forms is an attempt to pad the number of voters for one of the contending groups and would clearly make a mockery of the whole election process,” Gonzalez said in a petition her group had submitted to the UPAA Comelec on April 27.
“(We) are moved by concern and outrage over what amounts to a brazen attempt to steal the elections in an association which, because it carries UP’s good name, would dishonor the institution we all love. There is also the additional concern that this … could be a dangerous precedent in future UP elections, for who could prevent any group from doing the same thing?”
The Group of 21 also accused the Comelec of “partisan decision” after the latter dismissed the petition on the basis of a resolution it had passed on April 22.
But the UP Comelec strongly contested this charge and maintained that it was not an issue.
Also, upon reviewing the rules, the Comelec members decided that what makes UP graduates eligible to vote is that one is a graduate of UP and he or she has paid dues worth 100 pesos annual fee or 1,000 pesos lifetime membership on or before April 15 this year.
According to Victor Avecilla, a member of the UP Comelec and a professor of broadcast communications, the main problem is that the system is open to various interpretations.
Avecilla said that the rules did not indicate whether a graduate is required to submit an authorization letter or an application form to register as a voter.
It was also because of this ambiguity that the Comelec promulgated on Feb. 14 additional rules that would govern the conduct of elections.
The rule, Avecilla said, was promulgated even before Gonzalez’s group had questioned the validity of the envelopes.
Avecilla said that one can be registered as a voter by other people even without his consent, but no one else but the graduate can withdraw or get his ballot without his authorization.
According to Avecilla, the UPAA Secretariat verifies if the registered voter is indeed an alumnus of the university.
The other members of the Comelec are Napoleon Vergara, chairman of the committee and professor at the UPLB and Ruby Alcantara, a professor of the Filipino Department at UP Diliman.
On May 27, both parties had filed petitions before the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 221.
Santiago’s group filed a petition seeking the disqualification of Gonzalez as a candidate on the ground that she is past the mandatory retirement age for non-political public office.
Santiago’s group also claimed Gonzalez misrepresented herself when she claimed in her campaign leaflets that she was responsible for the donation of large sums of money to the University and that the Bahay ng Alumni was constructed through her effort.
Gonzalez’s group on the other hand, sought the exclusion and rejection of the contents of the two envelopes which Santiago’s party submitted on April 15.
On May 30, Judge Rogelio Pizarro heard both sides and dismissed both petitions.
The judge also persuaded both parties to move the canvassing of ballots to June 16, instead of the earlier scheduled May 31. With a report from Amy Remo
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