Friday, May 21, 2010

Iglesia Ni Cristo Alagad partylist votes in 2010


Manila, Philippines (May 2010) - Wondering why the Iglesia Ni Cristo's ALAGAD partylist has a low number of votes in the Philippine national election 2010? It's because only (an estimated) 65% of INC members supported the Iglesia Ni Cristo's ALAGAD partylist. Only big and major INC ecclesiastical districts voted for ALAGAD. The scattered smaller INC districts and locales were instructed by Eduardo Manalo to vote to different partylists to avoid exposing the real number of INC votes.



Contrary to common beliefs, Iglesia Ni Cristo does not fully support ALAGAD partylist. The final total vote of ALAGAD partylist is not the 100% voting population of INC. To be fair to INC, I do not agree what political critics says that ALAGAD vote is the actual number of the INC vote. There are reports that in the Philippine election 2010, 54 INC district ministers in Visayas and Mindanao defied Eduardo Manalo's decision to support Noynoy Aquino. Iglesia Ni Cristo in Visayas and Mindanao opted to support Gibo Teodoro as president which may explain to us that Iglesia Ni Cristo is really not that "solid". They do not wholeheartedly support Noynoy Aquino as well as their own ALAGAD partylist. This shows that even in picking presidential candidate, Iglesia Ni Cristo does not show unity.
But based on the data we retrieved from the COMELEC website, we can notice that the strong INC population supported ALAGAD partylist. INC members in Manila, Quezon City, San Juan City, Caloocan City, Valenzuela, Malabon City, Mandaluyong, Navotas City, San Juan, Cavite, Bulacan, Rizal and Cebu supported ALAGAD. Relatively INC chapters in small cities and provinces supported other partylists. The Iglesia Ni Cristo vote does not show unity even among on their own ranks. This has a long way of history back in 1986 People Power evolution. Erano Manalo decided to stand beside Marcos ignoring the democracy call of Cory Aquino. Some INC members voted for Cory Aquino as reported by PCIJ.



ALAGAD partylist representative is Rodante D. Marcoleta, reported as an INC member. But being an INC member does not easily gave Rodante Marcoleta a 100% full support from his church mates. It is approximated (with conservative estimate) that only 65% of the INC members supported and voted for ALAGAD. So for example if there's only 220,000 votes went in for ALAGAD which represents the 65% INC voting population, it means that the other 35% or 118,000 INC votes went to other partylists. In these figures, we can already estimate how big or small the Iglesia Ni Cristo vote really are.

220,000 = 65% INC members voted ALAGAD partylist (major INC locations voted ALAGAD)
118,000 = 35% INC members voted other partylists
_____________
338,000 = Iglesia Ni Cristo voting population
(Even if we doubled up the current ALAGAD votes 220,000 x 2; it will not even reach half a million)

338,000 is a farcry from the millions of INC vote that Arlyn DelaCruz reported.
(Arlyn DelaCruz is an Iglesia Ni Cristo member.)
Iglesia Ni Cristo Arlyn Dela Cruz is an INC member

If the 8 major INC locations in NCR was only able to get 86,000 votes,
where can INC get the big remaining numbers to fill up at least 1 million votes?
Please consider that Iglesia Ni Cristo membership is heavily concentrated in NCR.

Provinces and different part of the Philippines cannot give us a convincing figures
that can persuade us to believe that INC can reach even half a million number of voters.
Cavite, Bulacan and Rizal are the only NonNCR locations
that gave ALAGAD quite a big number of votes; 81,000 votes.

Even the ALAGAD voters in CEBU only gave around 9,000 votes for the Iglesia Ni Cristo partylist.

The Iglesia Ni Cristo support for ALAGAD partylist is based on their ecclesiastical districts. But we can see from the data we gathered from the Comelec website that the INC major locations supported ALAGAD partylist. Partylist election is a NATIONAL affair which may lead us to ask why are they "unified?" in choosing president, vice president and senators but Iglesia Ni Cristo is DIVIDED in choosing partylist? Is Iglesia Ni Cristo afraid of exposing their "real" voting population? Now that ALAGAD partylist is in the bottom list of votes in 2010 election, how about Iglesia Ni Cristo putting a senator which is an INC member? How about allowing Rodante D. Marcoleta to run as a senator and all INC members will vote him? Bong Revilla and Lito Lapid is currently in the Philippine Senate how about adding INC's Rodante Marcoleta there? I'm daring the coward Eduardo Manalo to allow Iglesia Ni Cristo's Rodante D. Marcoleta to run as senator. With the INC's boastful claim that they have millions of votes, making Rodante D. Marcoleta a senator will be a walk in the park in INC and will put everyone who are doubting INC vote into a complete silence. Senator Rodante D. Marcoleta? Don't make me vomit.

NOTE: The year 2010 vote of ALAGAD partylist is way lower than the vote it got from the 2007 national election.


2 comments: