PHILIPPINES

“Advancing Electoral Reforms in the Philippines” is a USAID-funded IFES initiative to improve the Commission on Elections’ ability to effectively administer the 2007- 2008 national and local elections. To fulfill this objective, IFES has partnered with local institutions and electoral reform stakeholders to help guide the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) through a forward-looking process of internal reform and modernization.

IFES’ partnerships with electoral reform stakeholders have increased the efficacy of civil society organizations in their mission to educate and engage the electorate, thereby fostering a climate of greater accountability for electoral procedures and institutions.

PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS

Strengthening Election Administration and Management: IFES worked with the National College of Public Administration and Governance at the University of the Philippines to develop a comprehensive election manual and a trainer’s guide focused on ethics and values, laws and regulations, and operations and procedures to enhance COMELEC’s capacity to manage elections. IFES also helped the COMELEC National Pool of Trainers and Facilitators design targeted trainings for the boards of election inspectors and boards of canvassers in coordination with Provincial Election Supervisors and Election Officers. Capacity-building initiatives included the development of an educational program on international standards for new and current commissioners and their chiefs of staff.

IFES also assisted COMELEC in conducting a voter education campaign through television and radio advertisements that addressed issues of integrity in the electoral process, including vote buying and vote selling, vigilance, responsible voting, and transparency of the canvassing process. The campaign, which involved six television spots and ten radio spots broadcast nationally 191 times in the case of the television spots and over 400 times for the radio spots, was done in partnership with the Association for Accredited Advertising Agencies.

IFES is currently working with COMELEC to establish an Election Resource Center (ERC) in order to institutionalize capacity-building efforts and provide a focal point for voter education and training initiatives. The Resource Center, slated for launch in March of 2008, will be publicly-accessible. It will utilize modern library technology and multimedia to provide a user-friendly environment for research and basic information-gathering for everyone.

Finally, IFES plans to work with COMELEC to jump-start an extensive civic education program. The program may include a combination of educational programs in primary and secondary schools as well as undergraduate levels and continuous voter education programs for the general public. The program may include a “model congress” and a “kids voting program” modeled after “Kids Vote USA.” IFES continues to work with COMELEC to ensure the smooth transition to a modernized election system in 2010.

Expand Citizens’ Involvement in Electoral Reform: The Citizens’ Coalition for ARMM Electoral Reform (Citizens CARE or C-CARE) was formed in 2005, through a sub-grant to the Consortium for Electoral Reform, to provide local organizations an opportunity to conduct voter education and monitor the 2005 elections held in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). During this electoral exercise, C-CARE functioned as an officially accredited citizens’ arm of the COMELEC. Through targeted trainings and workshops, IFES continues to build the administrative and managerial capacity of C-CARE With IFES’ support, C-CARE mobilized upwards of 5,000 election monitors for the May 2007 elections.

Also under this program, IFES supported the newly-formed Legal Network for Truthful Elections (LENTE) to deploy 6,339 lawyers, paralegals and law students to monitor the canvassing process around the country. This effort was a great success, drawing attention to irregularities and providing civil society with access to a part of the electoral process that had previously not been effectively monitored. IFES continues to support LENTE in their work in organizing on a nationwide basis and advocating for key reforms in the area of election law.

IFES is working closely with the Lawyer’s League for Liberty (Libertas) to assess the election complaint adjudication system, which consists of research, focus group discussions, a consultative workshop, establishment of a reform network, and presentation of recommendations to decision-makers. The goal of this program is to provide baseline data on the election adjudication system in the Philippines and to raise awareness of the need for reform. Also in the area of election adjudication, IFES worked with the Philippine Judicial Academy (PHILJA) to train regional trial court judges and clerks of court on election laws to better enable them to efficiently and effectively adjudicate election disputes.

IFES coordinated with the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) to conduct a comprehensive media monitoring project. With support from IFES, CMFR was able to monitor the media coverage of the national campaign for the May 14, 2007 elections, which was published in a book titled “The CMFR Monitor: News Media Coverage of the 2007 National Elections”.

Finally, through the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, IFES funded a series of training programs nationwide to tackle the professional challenges in the coverage of local and national elections in the Philippines, particularly concerning logistical, ethical, and safety issues for journalists. Over 180 journalists around the country were trained under this program.

Providing Technical Assistance on Political Finance Reform: IFES worked closely with civil society organizations to design, plan, and execute an initiative to monitor campaign finance issues in the 2007 elections. In the process, IFES held a conference that brought together key stakeholders on campaign finance reform and developed a targeted campaign finance monitoring effort in coordination with a coalition of civil society organizations, TAN, the Consortium for Electoral Reform (CER), the Access to Information Network (ATIN) and LIBERTAS, who formed the Pera’t Pulitika Working group. To this end, IFES held trainings for its civil society partners and journalists on monitoring campaign finance activities.

The project’s goal is to empower citizens with (1) knowledge of the impact campaign finance has on fair elections and (2) the skills to monitor and advocate for compliance with effective campaign finance laws. The project activity was launched in January 2007, as the country prepared for the national and local races held on May 14.