CenPEG’s 2013 summer practicum:
‘A life-changing experience’

CenPEG.org
June 17, 2013

From a book launch, to hiking on mountain trails and payao (rice paddies), immersing among workers and, finally, election watch volunteering. This is how 12 political science students from the University of the Philippines (UP) in Manila and another from the university’s Diliman campus (college of education) spent summer this year.  

The 13 students enlisted under CenPEG’s Volunteer Integration Program (VIP) with academic credits from April 19 – May 21, 2013. The summer practicum was the eighth since the VIP program was launched by CenPEG in 2005, a year after its founding. Previous summer practicum and NSTP students also came from UP Diliman and Los Banos, De La Salle University, and other schools.

This year’s corps of summer interns served as documenters and volunteer secretariat in the back-to-back launching on April 10 of two books on Philippine elections, namely, Was Your Vote Counted? Unveiling the Myths about Philippine Automated Elections, and Hacking Our Democracy. The first book was authored by contributing writers from CenPEG and the election watchdog Automated Election System Watch (AES Watch) and the second by newspaper columnist Rene B. Azurin. The two books were launched at the Ateneo Professionals School, Rockwell, Makati.

They also acted as volunteer staff in a press conference announcing the filing of a Petition against the Commission on Elections (Comelec) through the Philippine government by 34 individual petitioners before the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC). Citing Article 25 (right of suffrage) of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Petition (or Communication) led by former Vice President Teofisto T. Guingona, Jr., charged the Comelec, among others, of violating the right of Filipino voters to transparency in the counting of votes, hence, an infringement of the sovereign will of the people. The UNHRC is based in Geneva, Switzerland. Acting on landmark human rights petitions and cases during the Macapagal-Arroyo presidency (2001-2010), the UN Secretary General was compelled to send fact-finding missions in the Philippines led by UN Rapporteur Philip Alston to probe the accountability of the national government in the summary executions of progressive activists. The Supreme Court (SC) then led by Chief Justice Reynato Puno was likewise compelled to invoke judicial intervention by issuing the writs of amparo and of habeas data.

On April 22-25, 10 of the student interns went to the Cordillera Day anniversary together with a delegation to Tabuk, Kalinga. (Separate missions went to other locations in Cordillera to mark the martyrdom of Kalinga warrior Macliing Dulag. For being in the forefront of a fierce resistance against the planned Chico Dam that would have inundated several villages, Dulag was assassinated by Philippine Army soldiers at his home on April 24, 1980 in Bugnay Village, Tinglayan town.) While in Kalinga, the students went on a community immersion trekking by treacherous trails, foot bridge, along rice terraces, and spending night with villagers. The students took the opportunity to conduct community research on the Kalinga voters’ experiences during the May 2010 first automated elections.

On Labor Day May 1, the students joined thousands of workers and people’s organizations in a march rally at the Liwasang Bonifacio, Manila that culminated in Mendiola. The interns’ immersion was preceded by a briefing on the country’s labor situation led by an education officer from the Crispin Beltran Resource Center.

Joining other poll watchers, the summer interns served as the main force for the AES Watch monitoring of the May 13 mid-term elections at the watch group’s monitoring center in the offices of the UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies (CIDS), ground level, Ang Bahay ng Alumni in Diliman. The two-week monitoring covered the final testing and sealing (FTS) activity of Comelec, election day, and post-election. The AES Watch election monitoring was in partnership with CIDS, UP Padayon and UP Halalan 2013, community affairs desk of the Diliman vice-chancellor, M3P, and the Information Technology and Development Center (ITDC). Volunteers also came from We Watch. Monitoring data was generated from the Computer Professionals Union (CPU), Kontra Daya, NAMFREL, 1Vote, and tri-media. Teams of volunteers documented the FTS and election day in the National Capital Region and provinces.

Highlight of the monitoring was a press conference of AES Watch on May 18 which assessed the mid-term election as “worse than in 2010). The SRO-attended press conference, held at the AES Watch monitoring center, ended with a skit dramatizing how the election was blundered by Comelec chairman Sixto Brillantes, Jr., and Smartmatic’s super-salesman Cesar Flores.

All activities of the summer practicum were integrated under a policy research program where the students learned practice-based theoretical frameworks, field research methodologies, checklist-guided informal surveys, and participative research through community immersion and observation. As teams and collective batch, the students did researches and reports on, among others, the indigenous people’s and other sectors’ observations on the automated election, an SC mandamus petition filed by senatorial candidate Richard Gordon, the May 10 picket-rally before Comelec, summary of election incidents, and political dynasties after the May 13 elections. The incident reports updated AES Watch’s IT and political analysts especially for media interviews. The reports also served as database for investigating the “60-30-10 pattern” observed in the election outcome, will form part of a final assessment report on the 2013 mid-term elections to be released by CenPEG before the end of the year.

All the student interns received certificates of completion on May 21. The event was attended by CenPEG Board chair Temy Rivera, former Board chair Bien Lumbera, Vice Chair Roland Simbulan, CenPEG executive staff led by Evita L. Jimenez, and Prof. Malou Nicolas, head of CIDS.

CenPEG’s summer practicum was described by the interns as: a “mix of utmost fun and excitement,” “very rewarding,” an “all-rounded experience,” “fulfilling,” and “building confidence, balancing immersion with research.” Some called it “very organized and systematic,” “strictly adheres to schedule,” “emphasized the importance of group dynamics,” “a good training for research” where one learns work ethics and interaction with people. Another called it a “life-changing experience” liberating oneself from a “comfort zone” of indecisiveness and individual selfishness.