In Search of Credible Elections and Parties: The Philippine Paradox 49 1953 presidential contest Ramon Magsaysay's supporters planned a coup d'etat if he did not win. And in 1961, there was the threat of open violence when the incumbent Carlos Garcia, considered not yielding the presidency to Diosdado Macapagal (1991: 40-41). Electoral violence and manipulation in the pre-martial law period reached unprecedented heights in the 1969 presidential reelection campaign of Ferdinand Marcos when the full range of the 3-Gs formula – “guns, goons, and gold ” – for winning elections was deployed with impunity. Moreover, these flawed electoral exercises were also facilitated by the weakness of the country's institutional electoral governance as shown by the Commission on Elections' (COMELEC) lack of independence and bureaucratic incompetence.5 With the dramatic demise of the Marcos dictatorship in 1986, the resumption of electoral contests in 1987 did not put an end to the cycles of electoral crises besetting the country. Reflecting a deeper problem of the state's historic weakness in addressing basic problems of socio-economic development particularly in the face of a politicized military, unresolved armed challenges by communist and Muslim movements, as well as patronage-driven political warlordism, elections since 1987 have continued to show significant levels of violence and coercion, and new forms of vote manipulation and fraud. Undoubtedly in the post-martial law era, the most brazen projects to manipulate electoral results occurred in the 2004 presidential elections and the 2007 senatorial and local elections.6 In 2004, the legitimacy of the election of Mrs. Gloria Macapagal- Arroyo as president was widely doubted when she was wiretapped while communicating with one of the COMELEC commissioners, Virgilio Garcillano, in an attempt to ensure her election. Subsequently, she apologized for this act and later faced several failed impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives. Moreover, the Mayuga Report of the military panel formed to investigate the involvement of military personnel in the 2004 election fraud included testimonies confirming that military officers were either pressured or served as accomplices in some of the fraud committed in Mindanao.7 These damning testimonies were provided by two high-ranking generals, Lt. Gen. Rodolfo C. Garcia and Brig. Gen. Raymundo Ferrer, and Lt. Col. Victoriano Pimentel.8 However, the Mayuga panel did not take these revelations seriously and ended up clearing all the top military officers linked to the systematic electoral fraud perpetrated in some of the Mindanao provinces in 2004. In the 2007 senatorial elections, the systematic vote manipulation in Maguindanao province resulted in none of the opposition candidates making it to the top 12 winning slots in the province. Widely seen as an improbable result,