If you’re a registered voter of the ARMM, you’re not anymore. Thus said the Commission on Elections, in light of a joint resolution from both Houses of Congress, annulling the book of voters of the municipalities/cities in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanano (ARMM).
According to Joint Resolution No. 3, signed by House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. and Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and approved by President Benigno S. Aquino III on June 11, 2012, the voters list in the ARMM needs to be annulled because of the “presence of hundreds of thousands of illegal and fictitious registrants in the ARMM which needs to be deleted.”
“The practice of padding the Book of Voters has been resorted to by unscrupulous political leaders to perpetuate themselves in power and gives them a sense of invincibility to commit unbridled abuses and anomalies… The anomaly in the ARMM has national ramification because these ‘ghosts’, fictitious and double (some are triple) registrants constitute the so-called ‘command votes’ or ‘controlled votes’ wielded by political warlords that could decide the winner not only in local but most importantly the national elections,” the Joint Resolution said.
There were 1,778,817 registered voters in five provinces of the ARMM (Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, Maguindnanao and Lanao del Sur), according to the COMELEC.
The COMELEC is set to conduct a general registration of voters in the region starting July 9-18, 2012.
