When reforms began in the ARMM a year ago, the much touted flagship reform were the electoral processes. ARMM was then notorious for being the electoral fraud capital of the country. Everybody believed that the list of voters was padded and the whole processes were corrupted beyond redemption.

There is the urgent need for radical electoral reforms beginning with the cancelation of the list of voters, adapting a 100% biometrics in the new registration of voters and for the first time in the country piloting biometric electoral processes from the actual giving of the ballots to the counting and appreciation of the ballots.

With this new scheme, technology would simplify the usual early distribution of ballots, the early filling or shading of the ballots and casting the ballots for counting in the PCOS machines. COMELEC claims that with new technology, that is, biometric elections, frauds would be things of the past.

The new registration, no doubt, has done the job of removing double registrations. The registered voters, notwithstanding the entry of new voters after three years, have been reduced by more than 300,000.

But the bad news is the fact that the much touted biometrics would only apply in the registration. COMELEC neither has the funds or the expertise to go for piloting in 2013 the so-called biometric elections. This means that any registered voter can vote and or somebody else.

In the ARMM, we have nearly perfected the art of electoral fraud, of course this can only happen through the partnership of COMELEC, AFP, PNP and DepEd under the baton of the LGU.

The favorite trick in the strategy called ‘clustering of precincts’. This happens when on the basis of the report of the security sectors (AFP and PNP) certain places or areas are declared as hot spots, COMELEC decides to cluster precincts and put them all in a safe area. Safe here means placing the clustered precincts far from actual voters so that they would no longer bother to vote. With this, the votes in the said clustered precincts are all manufactured. In fact, they are delivered to the anointed candidates by the LGU or the dominant power in the said area.

Now nobody speaks of biometric elections in the ARMM anymore. It seems that the electoral reforms lay solely in purging of the list of double registrants. Gone is the talk of new technology being piloted in the 2013 ARMM elections.

The other scheme that COMELEC has in mind to thwart the electoral fraud is the general switching of ALL election officers and local commanders of PNP and AFP that have been working with the incumbents in the LGUs. By doing so, COMELEC would be removing the thought of partnership between the LGU, local COMELEC and the security sectors. However, this is easier said than done.

As everyone knows, government including COMELEC and the incumbents have their own agenda. Often these agenda converge, and in places where the opposition are the incumbents, different rules apply.

From the unfolding events, it seems that the much touted electoral reforms would not go beyond the thin veneer of purging the double registrants. We have made our people believe in electoral reforms. We have made assurance that with these reforms, the 2013 elections in the ARMM will not only be clean and orderly but also credible.

Well, it is a mirage of reforms. With the unfolding development, the ARMM 2013 elections would be more of the same. Folks, ‘fasten your seat belts, it is business as usual!