Gordon tells Abalos to quit if poll automation won’t happen in 2007

Sen. Richard Gordon advised Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Benjamin Abalos yesterday to resign if he cannot implement the partial automation of elections for the May 2007 polls.

Gordon was infuriated over repeated statements by Abalos and other Comelec commissioners about the supposed lack of time to put in place an automated election system (AES) in specific areas of the country for the 2007 midterm elections.

The Senate approved the election automation bill last week but Abalos was quoted as saying that it was already too late to implement poll computerization in the 2007 elections.

"He (Gordon) is the chairman of the committee on constitutional amendments and it took him almost half of his term to pass a bill for poll automation and now he would call for my resignation if we could not implement it immediately. How unkind of the senator," Abalos said. "Besides, I don’t think his opinion represents that of the people."

Abalos said Gordon’s committee only passed a bill that would allow automation, but did not specify the technology to be used.

While Abalos said he would have wanted to supervise the first ever computerized elections in the country, it is no longer possible due to time constraints: "More than anyone else I want the elections to be automated and leave a good legacy but I would not push for its immediate implementation if it could adversely affect the conduct of the elections."

"It’s not the Comelec but the members of the technical committee whom they have chosen who will determine the type of technology to be used and, after that, there would be testing of the new technology and familiarization of voters so it would really take a long time to implement," Abalos said.

"I am very, very chagrined at the very cavalier pronouncements being made by the chairman of the agency constitutionally required to run an election," Gordon said.

"(Abalos) is now laying the predicate to say that we cannot do it. He has to implement the law and he should not be talking in public, he should tell us while we are about to go to bicameral, how best we can do it," he added.

Gordon, chairman of the Senate committee on constitutional amendments and revisions of codes and laws, insisted that there is enough time until May next year to purchase the necessary hardware and software for the partial automation of elections.

He recalled that, during the hearing on the budget of the Comelec earlier this year, elections commissioner Florentino Tuason informed the Senate that the Comelec can implement the partial automation of elections next year.

"Obviously, I was quite perturbed and quite disturbed by the fact that he started a dialogue to obviously save his machines (optical media readers). Even blaming the bill that we have prepared, making it appear that we were the ones who killed those machines. It was the Supreme Court who killed those machines because of the manner upon which they violated their own bidding procedures among other things," Gordon said referring to the voided P1.3-billion Mega Pacific counting machines contract.

The bicameral conference committee is set to start deliberations on the two versions of the election automation bill when regular sessions resume on Nov. 6.

Gordon said that he has spoken with his counterpart in the House of Representatives, Makati City Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr., and they agreed to be very quick in the bicameral discussions so that the Comelec would have enough time to implement the new law.

"That will give them enough time to be able to prepare the groundwork for only six provinces and six cities," he said.

"If they can’t take the heat, let them get out of the kitchen. It’s about time to resign," Gordon said.

"(Abalos) claims that this is the last act of his career. Don’t you want to crown it with the start of computerization of the elections? Now he’s saying it cannot be done," Gordon said.

Youth bat for computerized polls

In a related development, the National Youth Commission (NYC) said it would continue to call for the automation of the 2007 elections despite pronouncements from the Comelec that there is not enough time for poll computerization next year.

The Comelec also said the SC restraining order stopping the use of the ACMs is still in effect, which the poll body says is another hindrance to poll automation.

In a resolution recently adopted by the NYC, the nation’s youth leaders demanded the implementation of RA 8436 to pave the way for the automated counting of votes "to curtail cheating and fraud in the coming elections."

"The youth sector is united in calling for honest, orderly and credible elections," the resolution said.

"We are dead set to rally and mobilize all youth organizations throughout the country in pressing for the automation of the 2007 elections, and we shall use any and all venues and resources at our disposal in pushing for the use of automated counting machines in the elections," the youth leaders said at a press conference at the Club Filipino in Greenhills, San Juan town.

NYC acting chairperson Priscilla Marie Abante said the youth cannot wait for another election to have the automated counting of votes realized: "We already have RA 8436, and we have the machines already tested and validated by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) as conforming to the standards and requirements of an automated election system." — With Mayen Jaymalin, Helen Flores and Sandy Araneta