Mission lauds Comelec, Smartmatic

The hottest running story in the media these days is the back-to-back revelations by former Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) governor Zaldy Ampatuan and erstwhile Commission on Elections (Comelec) official Lintang Bedol that there was indeed wholesale cheating in the 2004 and 2007 polls.

These declarations have resurrected allegations of vote padding that have often marred the integrity of elections in the country prior to the automated elections of 2010, the latter having received accolades from its citizenry and the international community.

Respectable polling firms like the Social Weather Stations, Pulse Asia and StratPOLLS in separate surveys have affirmed the public perception that the elections were, for a change, generally clean and credible, largely due to the speedy and accurate results of the elections delivered by Comelec and technology provider partner Smarmatic-Total Information Management Corp. (TIM). 

If doubts still linger over the credibility of the 2010 elections, then the recent report by an international election observation mission identified with former US President Jimmy Carter should erase such misgivings.

This mission led by the Carter Center, the Atlanta- global peace and health advocacy institution, lauded Comelec and Smartmatic-TIM for this political exercise, which, it said, was “marked by relatively high public confidence and trust on the use of the optical mark recognition technology.”

“Such a success is a credit to the hard work of Comelec and Smartmatic as well as the commitment of the people of the Philippines toward increasingly transparent elections,” assessed the Carter Center, which was founded by the former US president and his wife Rosalynn.

This assessment is a big slap on the face of the critics of the automated election system, among them, an organization calling itself the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (Cenpeg) and the Comelec’s very own commissioner, Augusto “Gus” Lagman.

The Carter Center’s seal of approval on the conduct of the 2010 automated elections in the Philippines is a strong argument for considering Smartmatic-TIM’s offer to acquire at a huge discount the AES technology plus 82,000 PCOS machines that the Comelec had leased from its private partner. 

With the discounts and other additional benefits attached to the offer, Smartmatic-TIM executives said the Comelec could save up to P18 billion by using the PCOS machines in electoral exercises for the remainder of the Aquino presidency in lieu of scouting around for a new technology provider via another public bidding.

But knowing Lagman and his ilk, we won’t be surprised if they would choose to ignore or dismiss the findings in the Carter Center report, and continue instead in using their influence not only to discredit a system that has proven to be accurate, reliable and fast in delivering election results, but also to push their own agenda.

A confusing process

It’s unfortunate that two of the country’s largest and most aggressive property developers are now embroiled in a battle over a 7.7-hectare property owned by the Negros Occidental provincial government.

While the Ayala group has reportedly won the bidding, some quarters have expressed reservations and are even raising questions as to the outcome of the process.

Negros Occidental Rep. Albee Benitez said he was saddened by the outcome of the bidding, saying the whole thing may not have been fully thought of for this kind of misunderstanding to happen and adding that bidding should have been done properly.

Benitez was reportedly with SM Prime Holdings president Hans Sy when the company presented to Negros Occidental Gov. Alfredo Marañon its unsolicited bid for the property as well as the company’s P2.5-billion development plan for it.

According to the solon, SM submitted the highest bid but it was declared a failure and that SM will try to enforce their position that they won the last bidding.

He said they are looking at the way they handled the bidding process for the provincial property to find out why confusion and misunderstanding happened in the first place.

Benitez questioned why the committee declared a failure of bidding when SM participated in the July 7 re-bidding and offered a higher price than Ayala.

He said that what SM is emphasizing is how come the Commission on Audit (COA) valuation was not part of the bid documents prior to the bidding and why inspite of the fact that two bidders participated and that the bids were opened, the process was declared a failure.

He also pointed out that SM was made to believe that there was room for unsolicited bid, so they sent a letter to the province for the unsolicited bid, only to find out that there will be an actual bidding.

CamSur’s future uncertain

Debate now rages over a legislative proposal to split Camarines Sur or CamSur into two provinces, and this, mind you, is not even on the floor of Congress.

I personally know little of CamSur. What I’ve learned though is that it is the venue of this year’s Advertising Congress, that it is becoming the wakeboarding capital of the world, and that its water sports arena is world-class. From listening to CamSur Gov. Lray Villafuerte, we have learned how the provinces has transformed itself into one of the poorest provinces in the country into one of the richest, largely due to its tourism-promotion activities.

There have been concerns from some sectors, however, that LRay has been doing CamSur tourism a disservice by driving away patrons from CamSur’s wakeboarding attractions by asking them to patronize instead an artificial wakeboarding facility in Laguna.

There have also been complaints filed against CamSur officials before the Ombudsman, based primarily on various financial anomalies uncovered by the Commission on Audit in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

The COA report on CamSur for 2007 alone noted at least 20 irregularities and non-reportage on provincial expenditures, a finding which may have been used by the National Statistical Coordinating Board to lump CamSur together with Maguindanao at last places in its Good Governance Index (GGI).

They claim that at least 10 complaints have been filed against LRay and other CamSur officials for plunder and violation of the anti-graft law, but it’s unclear what has happened to the cases. LRay is also being asked to explain the purported non-issuance of receipts in the CamSur Watersport Complex and Caramoan island resort which are being run by the provincial government.

Will the proposal to divide CamSur into two solve all these problems? Or will it worsen the situation? Expect the floor debates in Congress to be more heated.

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