MANILA, Philippines
- The House appropriations committee has endorsed the allocation of nearly P8
billion for the automation of the May 2013 congressional and local elections.
The amount is 80
percent of the P10-billion 2012 budget of the
Commission on Elections (Comelec).
The money will be
for the purchase or lease of computer machines to be used in the casting of
ballots and counting of votes.
They would be
similar to the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines used in the May 2010 elections.
To save on cost,
Cagayan de Oro City Rep. Rufus Rodriguez urged Comelec officials to study
whether the PCOS units they leased from Smartmatic, the poll body’s automation
contractor, could still be used in 2013 with some safeguards.
He said the Comelec
has already paid Smartmatic more than P6 billion and has the option under its
contract to purchase the PCOS machines at a discounted price of P1.8 billion.
“If we can use
those machines for 2013 and one more national election, we will be saving
taxpayers at least P6.2 billion,” he said.
Comelec
Commissioner Gus Lagman, who was against the use of PCOS in 2010 when he was a
private information technology consultant, said it was not practical for the poll body to buy PCOS machines.
He said
warehousing would be a problem, plus the fact that technology changes fast.
He
added it would be better for the Comelec to lease instead of buying the
machines it would use in 2013.
Rodriguez, a member
of the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal (HRET), said he,
like Lagman, did not believe in PCOS when the Comelec was trying to convince
lawmakers and the public about the technology.
“But
now I am a believer. I saw how accurate the PCOS results were when we matched
them with the actual count of votes in resolving election protest cases in the
HRET. Because of their accuracy, we are now about to resolve all cases,” he
said.
Because
PCOS tabulation results were available at the municipal, city and provincial
levels, Rodriguez said the nation knew in a few days that then Sen. Benigno
Aquino III won the 2010 presidential election.
“Long
before the official congressional canvass started, we knew President Aquino
won. The Filipino people and foreign governments were already congratulating
him. Election operators could not tamper with the PCOS. It would have been a
different story if the old manual, cheating-prone system were used,” he
stressed.
The
lawmaker said that if the Comelec decides to use the PCOS, it should put in
place additional safeguards since election operators and cheaters might have
already studied how the technology works.
Besides
the P8 billion in automation funds, the 2012 Comelec budget includes P123.2
million for the resumption of the system of continuing registration.
The
poll body sought an additional P51.5 million for preparations for overseas absentee voting, but the Department of
Budget and Management (DBM) gave the money to the Department of Foreign Affairs
(DFA).
The
Comelec intends to use the bulk of the funds for travel expenses since it would
have to send teams to countries where there are large numbers of Filipinos.
The DBM
transferred the money to the DFA apparently to save on cost.
COMELEC rushes preps for 2013 polls
To
avoid further delay in the preparations for the 2013 elections, the Comelec
pushed for the immediate convening of the poll body’s advisory council.
Comelec
Chairman Sixto Brillantes said there is a need for the newly created
Information and Communications Technology Office (ICTO) to immediately convene
the Comelec Advisory Council and initiate the first step in election
preparations.
“We
need to move fast because we are already late (in our preparations) for the
2013 polls. We cannot move without the CAC,” Brillantes said.
Last
June, President Aquino issued an order dissolving the Commission on
Information and Communications Technology (CICT) and reorganizing it into ICTO
under the Department of Science and Technology (DOST).
Malacañang
named Louis Casambre as the executive director of ICTO. He will sit as chairman
of the CAC with members coming one each from the DOST and the Department of
Education, and another from academe, three from the IT industry, and two from
poll reform groups.
The CAC
shall have the function of recommending to the Comelec the “most appropriate,
secure, applicable and cost-effective technology” to be used as the automated election system (AES).
“We
want to start early and we already have a plan, the CAC should recommend the
approval,” Brillantes said. – By: Mayen Jaymalin
