Poll automation bill set for signing

MANILA, Philippines - President Arroyo is set to sign this week the P11.3-billion supplemental budget for the full automation of the 2010 elections, Malacañang said yesterday.

Press Secretary Cerge Remonde said the Palace received on Friday the enrolled copy of the bill that Congress approved earlier this month.

“We are happy to report that we received it last Friday so in one or two days, the President will take action on the supplemental budget for poll automation,” Remonde told dzRB.

He said the modernization of the elections is one of the major legacies the administration wants to leave behind.

Officials of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) earlier warned that if the bill would not be signed before the Lenten break, there would not be enough time to procure machines to modernize the polls.

Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said the Comelec has been allotted a total of P11,223,618,400 to automate elections in 2010.

Last week, the Comelec said it is set for the pre-bid conference and the opening of bids for the multi-billion poll automation.

Ferdinand Rafanan, head of the Comelec legal department and the chairman of the Special Bids and Awards Committee (SBAC), said the poll body is preparing for the bidding on April 27. The SBAC is tasked to handle the bidding activities for the modernization project.

Rafanan said the bidders would have to go through a strict eligibility screening.

Sealed bid proposals would be opened on April 27 at 10 a.m., the last day of the filing of bid proposals, he said.

Comelec chairman Jose Melo has invited the media and the public to witness the opening of bids at the poll body’s main office in Intramuros.

A separate bidding for the ballot boxes has been scheduled amounting to P78.170 million.

If signed into law, the automation of the 2010 election will finally take place after the Supreme Court voided the Comelec-Mega Pacific contract for “clear violation of law and jurisprudence” and “reckless disregard of Comelec’s own bidding rules and procedure” in 2004.

President Arroyo will leave a lasting legacy for the nation’s democracy should she fulfill her electoral pledge to automate the May 2010 presidential elections.