By Jerome Aning
Philippine Daily Inquirer
MANILA, Philippines – Election watchdog groups are as ready as they can ever be for Monday’s polls.
They are opening their monitoring centers, setting up hotlines and tapping the social media networks to receive, relay and process reports of cheating, violence and other election-related incidents from all over the country.
The Commission on Elections has accredited four watchdog groups as official citizens’ arms – Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting, National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections, One Vote Movement (1-Vote) and the Cotabato City-based Citizens’ Coalition for ARMM Electoral Reforms (Citizens Care).
There are also those watchdogs that have been set up by civil society groups, like the Automated Election System Watch, Kontra Daya, Legal Network for Truthful Elections (Lente), and the Workers’ Electoral Watch (We Watch).
The bigger groups have set up command or operation centers for the elections. PPCRV opened its command center at the Pope Pius XII Institute on United Nations Avenue in Manila last Tuesday.
The PPCRV command center will be fully operational starting Sunday and will remain open until the end of the month. It is equipped with computers and television screens on which electronically transmitted election results will be flashed.
Aside from its voter education and poll-watching duties, PPCRV will also be conducting an unofficial parallel election count, which will be made available online.
The PPCRV hotline during the elections is 52-PPCRV or 527-7278, which will be operational from May 13 to 30, from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. PPCRV volunteers will accept calls for free legal advice, vote tallies from the senatorial to mayoral levels, and reporting of election-related observations and queries from the public.