By Jeoffrey Maitem
Mindanao Bureau
First Posted 17:58:00 03/24/2008

COTABATO CITY, Philippines -- The Commission on Elections said 18,983 voters have registered twice in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez said the double registrants were discovered through Automated Fingerprint Identification System matching.

Jimenez said in order to have a clean computerized voters list, Comelec directed the deletion of the names with double/multiple registrants, he said.

“We’re removing all registrations subsequent to the first,” Jimenez told the Philippine Daily Inquirer on Saturday.

He said there would be a continuing registration on April 1, when they open the bids for automation of Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu, Tawi Tawi and Shariff Kabunsuan.

The Comelec earlier announced that the sole bidder for the optical mark-reader (OMR) technology was disqualified.

The automation of elections in ARMM requires the use of direct recording electronic (DRE) technology in Maguindanao and the OMR technology in other five provinces of the ARMM.

The DRE uses touch-screen or touch-pad technology for voting, while OMR requires voters to fill up a paper-based ballot which is fed to a specially designed machine, similar to a scanner.

On the other hand, the OMR technology involves the use of paper ballots which are then fed to an automated counting machine.

The Department of Budget and Management has allocated P867 million for the automation of the elections in ARMM in August.

Source: INQUIRER.NET 

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MARAWI CITY - Father Teresito Soganub doesn’t look like a Catholic priest and, from the outside, his cathedral doesn’t look like a church. In his parish, tucked away in Marawi, the only Islamic city in the Philippines, it’s easier that way.

“To avoid arguments and to avoid further misunderstandings we just plant the cross deep in our hearts,” said the 47-year-old priest, who doesn’t wear a crucifix or a clerical collar and sports a beard out of respect for his Muslim neighbors.

The Philippines, a largely Catholic country in Southeast Asia, proudly advertises its dominant faith even in the southern region of Mindanao, where an estimated 20 percent of the population is Muslim.

But Marawi City is an exception. This ramshackle city of wooden shacks and shabbily elegant mosques is around 385 miles south of Manila, but it’s a world apart for many Filipinos. Marawi is the spiritual center for the Maranao, the most devout of three major Muslim groups in the Philippines.

A quick glance at the streets of Marawi make it clear that this is a city of the crescent rather than the cross. “Gift of Allah” rather than “Gift of Jesus” is the sign blazoned across the city’s pedicabs, the local bank is Islamic and women are veiled.

Unique to Marawi, Muslim moral rules are part of the city code. Alcohol and gambling are banned, Muslim women must cover their heads, the sale of pork is forbidden and karaoke clubs, the beating heart of village life across the archipelago including other Muslim regions, are a no-no.

“At home with the family we can do karaoke but we do not allow it in public,” said Camid Gandamra, one of the province’s numerous sultans and also secretary of transport and communications in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), a homeland for Muslims established in 1989.

“It might encourage people to go to nightclubs and other places of amusement that are prohibited for our tribe,” said the father of 12, over tea and muffins in his smart city residence.

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