New schedule for submission of candidacies set

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) issued a resolution yesterday moved the period of the filing of candidacies for the May national and local elections to Dec. 15 through Jan. 2.

The filing was originally set for Nov. 12 up to Dec. 15.

"We decided to move it because we now have plenty of time to prepare for the elections since the automation of the elections will no longer be nationwide," Comelec chairman Benjamin Abalos said.

Abalos said they initially planned to reschedule the filing to Jan. 2 through Jan. 15.

The filing of candidacies usually draws all sorts of people from the serious politicians to the devoutly religious and esoteric.

In the 1998 elections, one candidate who aspired for the presidency even had a staff and was dressed in a robe like a character straight out of the Bible.

The Comelec, however, has the power to screen candidates, declare them as nuisance and, thereby, disqualify them if necessary to prevent the elections from turning into a circus.

The country will finally do away with the manual counting of ballots and use a computer system to tabulate votes starting with next year’s polls.

However, a congressional panel decided to limit the use of automated counting machines to a number of select cities and towns because of the limited number of machines.

These are Metro Manila; the cities of Baguio, Bacolod, Cagayan de Oro, Cebu and Iloilo; the provinces of Albay and Bataan; Lapu-Lapu, Mandaue and Talisay in Cebu; and the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, namely, the provinces of Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, and the cities of Cotabato and Isabela.

These areas have a total voting population of 12 million or 22 percent of the country’s expected 38 million voters, Abalos said.

"Personally, I would still prefer a nationwide automation but what can we do?" Abalos said.

Under the current system, ballots are counted manually, a process that took weeks to complete. The system’s cumbersome process left opportunities to manipulate the outcome.

Earlier, an unidentified Comelec official had told The STAR that next year’s polls might be headed for disaster despite the automation because of poor information dissemination, weaknesses in the system and lack of preparation time.

Abalos dismissed the prediction and vowed to complete the count in a few hours.