Press statement of Senator Loren Legarda

ON AUTOMATED POLLS

This reconciliation of Smartmatic and TIM with the blessings of the Comelec to conduct automated polls next year is a relief to our people. But that should not be enough. People should continue to be vigilant and watch the poll canvassing process with hawks' eyes.

People's watchdog organizations, including trained representatives of political parties, should be allowed to closely scrutinize the election and counting process to ensure total honesty and accuracy. The dark forces that hope to manipulate the elections for their own purposes continue to loom like phantoms.

With our experience in the dubious 2004 and 2007 elections, the people cannot afford to relax. If the elections next year are once more stolen, we cannot say what might happen next to our democratic system.

ON PRESS FREEDOM IN DANGER

The act of a military contingent of preventing 52 journalists from visiting a refugee center in Maguindanao is a blatant suppression of press freedom. The Commission on Human Rights has rightly condemned it as a violation of the Law on Armed Conflict of the United Nations. The National Union of Journalists have basis to call it an "illegal detention."

But the real victims of the detention are the Filipino people because they are being prevented from knowing the truth about the real situation of the refugee problem in Mindanao. An independent humanitarian organization, the Norwegian Refugee Council, has revealed that the world's largest displacement due to armed conflict occurred in Mindanao in 2008. There are also reports that the more than 500,000 war refugees in Mindanao are being ravaged by hunger and diseases.

The Philippine media is to be commended for trying to get at the truth of the refugee situation in Mindanao so that the nation can collectively help their compatriots in the south. The administration is to be blamed if the military has not been properly instructed to allow media access. Or is the administration deliberately suppressing the truth?