Resignation of 2 Comelec officials urged

The Makati Business Club (MBC) urged yesterday Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Benjamin Abalos and Commissioner Luzviminda Tancangco to immediately resign following the junking of the automated polling system they were trying to implement.

"Chairman Abalos and commissioner Tancangco should immediately resign and be replaced by persons of known integrity and credibility selected in a non-partisan manner," the powerful business group said in a statement.

The MBC said the Comelec has stubbornly refused to listen to expert opinion provided by information technology professionals that its three-phased program for voter validation, automated counting and data transmission was headed in the wrong direction.

The group claimed the Comelec did not even regularly convene its own technical advisory committee to review its own plans, resulting in the P3-billion modernization program, which includes the P1.2-billion contract, voided by the Supreme Court.

Two other contracts for voter validation and data transmission were not even supported by legislation, the MBC said.

The voter validation project and an earlier project known as precinct mapping both remain unfinished and may now even cause more confusion because the voter data bases may not be compatible, it added.

"Given this pattern of lack of integrity and the inability to successfully carry out such projects, these commissioners have placed the entire commission and these elections under a cloud of doubt and suspicion," the MBC said.

At the same time, MBC executive director Guillermo Luz disputed the contention of some Comelec officials that the national budget deficit was to blame for the rejection of the automated vote counting program.

"The money was always there. It was never insufficient or late," Luz told The STAR. "Instead, the Comelec used it on foolish projects like Phase 1 and 3 of the poll modernization."

Luz said the Comelec spent P1 billion for Phase 1, or the voters’ online validation, and P300 million for Phase 3, or the satellite transmission of election returns.— Nikko Dizon, Delon Porcalla