Int’l observers question Nanay Baby Pineda name on chairs

LUBAO, Pampanga—The leader of a team of international election observers on Monday questioned why classroom desk chairs marked “Donated by Gov. Nanay Baby Pineda” were being used in a polling precinct at the Rizal Elementary School in Barangay (village) Concepcion here.

“We took note of this. It may appear to be propaganda… It is questionable that public properties bear the names of public officials,” said Daniel Mann, a lecturer at Germany’s Wurzburg University.

Mann’s team was part of the Compact for Peaceful and Democratic Elections-International Observers Mission 2013 (Compact-IOM 2013).

For her part, Pineda explained in a phone interview that she donated the armchairs in 2010 after the floods of that year.

“Those chairs have been there for almost three years now. They were not placed there because it is election time. Those are for the students, not for me,” she said.

She pointed out that the signs indicating the chairs were her donation were written on their back.

Pineda said the provincial government had also raised the floor of the schoolbuilding so that classes would not have to be suspended when flooding occurred.

Shanmugapriyah Thiyagarajah of Sri Lanka, a member of Compact-IOM 2013, interviewed Pineda on vote-buying.

‘Vote-buying destroys dignity’

Pineda told her: “I don’t like vote-buying. It brings down the dignity of a poor person. On the side of a leader, why will I buy votes when I am going to serve them? That’s not right and fair.”

In Baguio City, a foreign election observer who visited three polling precincts, said the conduct of the elections in the summer capital was orderly.

The observer, who asked not to be named, said he did not see any campaign posters on the school’s gates and there were no children distributing sample ballots, a scene that, he noted, was common in highly urbanized cities during elections.

“Resourcefulness was also displayed. In one precinct, ballots were found to be oversized by around a millimeter. Election officers decided to do precision-cutting on the rejected ballots so these could be properly read and inserted into the automated precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines,” he added.

The observer also noted that senior citizens and people with disabilities were given priority in voting.

“This gave an atmosphere of orderliness even if the voters had to wait for around one hour before completing the voting process,” he said.—Tonette Orejas, Inquirer Central Luzon and Desiree Caluza, Inquirer Northern Luzon