Daunting tasks for Comelec
By Joanne de Lara
(July 9, 2010) - While the rest of the country is already monitoring the first 100 days of President Benigno S. Aquino III, some areas of Bulacan, Lanao del Sur, Western Samar and Sulu are still left in limbo with no proclaimed local leaders. The Commission on Elections (Comelec) declared a failure of elections in these areas for a myriad of reasons such as election-related violence, transmission failures, machine breakdowns, and the failure of members of the Board of Election Inspectors (BEI) to arrive at the polling centers on time on election day.
Back to topAside from this, seven party list groups are yet to be proclaimed. Votes from the above- mentioned areas are deemed crucial due to the very slim difference in the total votes garnered by these party list groups. Hence, the groups will now have to wait until a few more months for the final results to be proclaimed.
As of this writing, the Comelec is still negotiating with Smartmatic-TIM with regard to the conduct of the special elections in some areas of the country. No guidelines have been issued regarding the special elections yet. What seems to be clear is that the Comelec would be buying 1,084 PCOS machines worth P52 million from Smartmatic-TIM for the special elections. Commissioner Larrazabal justified this decision stating that it would be more expensive to lease the machines like what they did during the May 10 elections.
In yet another point, the Comelec reiterated that ballots under electoral protest shall not be counted manually. Doing so would apparently result in a discrepancy between the manual count and the machine count used in the proclamation. Instead, the ballots will be re-read by the PCOS machines bought by the Comelec. In cases where the ballots cannot be read, poll officials would rely on the ballot images stored in the CF cards. However, Comelec seemed to have ignored the fact that upon orders of the national office many CF cards were already destroyed after the May 10 elections. Thus, big problems lie ahead should the need to use these compact flash cards arises.
Reports say hundreds of electoral protests are now pending in the Comelec and the House electoral tribunal – all screaming for justice for alleged automated fraud committed during the elections. Former Manila Mayor Lito Atienza who lost to Mayor Alfredo Lim and former Senator Mar Roxas II who similarly lost in his bid for vice presidency are some of the hundreds of candidates trying their luck the second time around.
Analyzing the facts at hand, it seems that the Comelec is up for receiving another round of bashing due to these alleged irregularities. For one, the Comelec should have conducted the special elections earlier to avoid spending such a huge amount on faulty machines which yielded questionable results. And when it comes to resolving electoral protests, the Comelec’s performance had always been unsatisfactory. In fact, the commission still released decisions on previous electoral protests a few weeks before the May 2010 election.
With a past record of being implicated to cases of fraud, corruption, and partisanship the question now arises whether the Comelec will ever be trusted and when.