APRIL 7, 2000 VOL. 26 NO. 13

Chris Stowers for Asiaweek In Taipei as elsewhere, getting the vote out and keeping a vigilant watch on the proceedings are crucial to ensuring the people's will prevails

How Asia Votes
Elections are now more honest and fair -- but beware money politics
By RICARDO SALUDO and JIM ERICKSON

An election, someone once quipped, is the only race in which most people pick the winner. At least that's the theory. It's a bit more complicated in real life. Taiwan's presidential election winner was not the choice of nearly two out of every three voters. Thailand's Election Commission (EC) disqualified 78 of those who topped the March 4 races for the 200 seats up for grabs in the country's first elections for the Senate.

Indeed, problems often begin well before election day. Last May, in voter registration for the southern Philippines' Muslim autonomous region, one Jul F. Faizal got somewhat overzealous. He signed up 26 times in four precincts of Patikul town, in the Sulu islands, using different names and hairstyles. The penalty of six months jail and losing the right to vote and run for office didn't scare him. But he didn't count on an instant-photo and computerized fingerprinting system being tested in Patikul by the Commission on Elections.

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The new Comelec procedure caught Faizal - and many others: two-thirds of voter forms in Patikul were found to have identical thumbprints. Thankfully, the rate of fraudulent registration is far lower elsewhere, as little as one in 3,000 in Ilocos, north of Manila. Still, Manila's Comelec estimates there are 3 million misregistered voters nationwide. On the other hand, Indonesia's voter tally in 1999 was down 16 million from two years before. Why the fall? You guessed it: the later list was purged of bogus names.

SPECIAL REPORT: Election: They are getting fairer and cleaner -- plus the highs and lows of Asia's voters • Rerun: Thailand finds fraud and orders new polls • Fair Polls: Two election watchdogs share their expertise

That's before a single ballot is cast. On polling day, dirty tricks abound: vote-buying, ballot-tampering, ballot-box stuffing, intimidation and terrorism. In Indian states such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, hundreds of people belonging to minority religions and the low castes could not cast their ballots.

The culprits: so-called "vote contractors" - village heads, community leaders and criminals hired by politicians to stop oppressed castes from voting, take over polling stations and salt results with bogus ballots. Thailand had its own version in local elections last May. In Samut Prakarn province, local thugs in pink shirts and helmeted motorcyclists descended on more than a dozen polling stations and jammed ballot boxes with false votes.

After the vote comes the count, and amazingly many officials don't seem to know how. Take the "dagdag-bawas" (literally, add-subtract) scheme in the Philippines' 1995 senatorial polls. A losing candidate protested that in many precinct tallies the votes recorded exceeded the number of voters registered. After a painstaking and costly recount of nearly 9 million ballots from 12,000 voting centers (one-sixth of the nationwide total), the Comelec deducted 243,704 votes from a victorious candidate who had placed No. 11. That dropped him to No. 15 and lifted a losing candidate into the winning dozen. (Unfortunately, the long recount and legal challenges to it prevented the rightful winner from taking up his post.)

Five Ways To Safeguard The Ballot

Create an independent election authority amply funded and empowered to mobilize police, investigate violations, and order polls suspended or repeated

Mobilize pollwatchers, even just to watch the voting and counting. That alone will deter many crooks

Educate voters about their rights, the conduct of elections, the issues, the candidates’ pluses and minuses

Keep the media free and professional, to elucidate the issues, report the election, and ferret out violations

Get the vote out -- the higher the turnout, the harder to buy, steal and terrorize the election

Sources: Asiaweek Research

But the good news is Asian elections are getting cleaner, less violent and more democratic - thanks to tougher laws and enforcers, more vigilant citizens and rising voter turnouts. Taiwan President-elect Chen Shui-bian won despite "black gold" money politics. And though Thailand's EC invalidated over a third of the 200 senatorial contests for alleged vote-buying and fraud, that was better than the days when the Interior Ministry, under the ruling coalition, supervised the polls and often winked at offenders (see breakout box).

"It's impossible to get rid of vote-buying and fraud completely," commission chairman Theerasak Karnasuta told Asiaweek. "But we hope to provide checks and balances, so rampant abuse will not happen in the next election." The rest of Asia shares a similar hope, given that both election authorities and non-government organizations are getting better at policing polls. In April, South Korea chooses lawmakers. Japan may do so later in the year, and Thailand has to hold parliamentary elections by November.

So how is Asia getting its election act together? With plenty of hard work, personal courage, institutional reform - and setbacks. The obstacles to honest, democratic elections are enormous, from money politics and voter apathy to poll fraud and terrorism. And that's assuming governments do not impose curbs on the press and the opposition to keep citizens voting one way. This Special Report looks at both the election challenges facing Asia and what it is doing to address them.

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