2015: A crucial year for Comelec

MANILA, Philippines – The year 2015 is crucial for the Commission on Elections (Comelec) as it struggles to prepare for the May 9, 2016 presidential polls.

“It is our preparation stage. It’s like building a house. If you go wrong in the foundation, it might impact when you are already on the upper floors. The house will collapse if the foundation is weak,” said Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista.

Bautista told The STAR that the tasks are overwhelming and he sometimes feels like he is a “juggler.”

“There are so many balls but you have to juggle all at the same time and really hope that you are able to make sure that not one of the balls falls,” he added.

The candidates

One of the difficult tasks faced by Comelec this year is identifying who are eligible to run in next year’s local and national elections.

According to Comelec spokesman James Jimenez, “it is important for the candidates to be compliant with eligibility rules prescribed by the Constitution and our laws because these rules represent what we, the people as the ultimate source of sovereign power, believe are the fundamental attributes we need our leaders to have.”

“The Comelec is duty-bound to enforce those rules as a form of obedience to the will of the people,” he said.

On Comelec’s plate are survey frontrunners Sen. Grace Poe and Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte who are seeking the presidency. They are both facing petitions for disqualification and cancellation of certificates of candidacy at the poll body.

For Bautista, however, the fate of an aspiring candidate actually lies in the hands of the Supreme Court (SC) and not with the Comelec.

“On our end, we balance it.  On the one hand, they say ‘let the people choose,’ Vox Populi Vox Dei – the voice of the majority is the voice of God. But we have to balance that with our rules because we are a nation of rules,” he maintained.

While the Comelec First Division had ruled to accept Duterte’s substitution of former Violence Against Crime and Corruption chairman Martin Diño as standard-bearer of the Partido ng Demokratikong Pilipino-Laban, it still has to resolve the petition for disqualification filed by broadcaster Ruben Castor.

On the other hand, the full commission voted to disqualify Poe last Dec. 23 for failing to meet the constitutional requirement on residency, which provides that a candidate for president must be a natural-born Filipino and residing in the Philippines for at least 10 years by election day.

The disqualification stemmed from the petitions filed by former Government Service Insurance System chief legal counsel Estrella Elamparo, former senator Franciso Tatad, De La Salle University professor Antonio Contreras and former University of the East College of Law dean Amado Valdez.

Poe’s camp is set to file a motion for temporary restraining order and status quo ante order tomorrow.

Automated election system

Bautista added the Comelec is “very careful” in choosing what automated system to use next year.

“I felt we had to look at our options but also come to a decision quickly. And then at the time, there were a lot of critics against the Comelec, I think mainly because they felt we were not being transparent and accountable in the way we do things,” he said.

The year 2015 is also when Comelec saw the retirement of three of its key officials – former chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr. and commissioners Lucenito Tagle and Elias Yusoph.

Bautista took over Brillantes’ post while Commissioners Rowena Guanzon and Sheriff Abas replaced the other two.

Three days before his retirement, Brillantes signed a P268.8-milion contract with Smartmatic-Total Information Management (TIM) Corp. to diagnose and provide major repairs and replacement of some 81,000 precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines that will be used in 2016.

The Integrated Bar of the Philippines, former Comelec commissioner Augusto Lagman, Automated Elections Systems Watch and Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo questioned the deal before the Supreme Court, which initially issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) and eventually annulled the contract in April.

Bautista recalled that by the time he joined Comelec in May, it felt like the poll body was racing for the time it lost hurdling all the challenges.

“When I came in, it was like we were behind in terms of preparations. We faced a lot of challenges. If I were to liken it to basketball games, I felt like we were 20 points down,” he said.

The Comelec held public biddings to determine which voting machines to use.  

Smartmatic-TIM bagged two lease contracts for 23,000 and 70,977optical mark reader (OMR) machines – now referred to by Comelec as vote counting machines (VCM) – for P1.72 billion and P7.8 billion, respectively.

A repeat order for 3,540 more VCMs was made, thus bringing to 97,517 the total number of VCMs to be used in the coming elections.

The poll body expects all the VCMs delivered from the Smartmatic manufacturing plant in Taiwan by January.

Bautista committed that the VCMs are much better than the PCOS machines as they intend to restore some security features like the ultraviolet lamp and digital signatures.

And, unlike in the 2010 and 2013 elections when the source code of PCOS machines were open for review very close to election day, Comelec had opened the source code to public scrutiny in October or seven months before the polls.

The source code is one of the most controversial aspects of the PCOS machines, as it pertains to the human-readable alphanumeric instruction that dictates how the machines should operate.

Mall voting

To “enhance voting experience,” Bautista has been pushing for the conduct of elections in malls, especially for senior citizens and people with disability. This is expected to benefit some two million voters.

The poll chief assured the public that mall voting is legal as he invoked the 1987 Constitution and the Omnibus Election Code.

He also said that mall voting is beneficial for Comelec and voters because such establishments are more spacious, with air-conditioning units and generators, closed-circuit television, and have stronger cellular signals, among others.

‘No bio, no boto’

Last Dec. 1, election preparations hit a snag when the SC, acting on a petition filed by the Kabataan party-list on Nov. 25, issued a TRO against the agency’s “no bio, no boto” campaign.

Under the campaign, Comelec would deactivate voters who do not have biometrics in accordance with Republic Act 10367 or the Mandatory Biometrics Law of 2013.

The Comelec opposed the TRO, arguing that voters were given ample time to register for biometrics from May 2014 to October 2015 – a total of 17 months. 

If the petition will be granted, it would mean the re-inclusion of about 2.5 million voters without biometrics into the voter’s lists. It may also result in longer queuing at poll precincts as the additional voters were not factored in when the Comelec leased the VCMs.

The SC though, on Dec. 16, upheld the “no bio, no boto” campaign, ruling that only those with biometrics would be allowed to vote in the coming elections.

More than 54 million Filipinos are expected to vote in the 2016 polls.

Debates

The Comelec is also organizing presidential and vice-presidential debates in coordination with media organizations. 

 The Philippine STAR, TV5 and BusinessWorld are set to host the presidential debate in the Visayas on March 20 in panel format.

ABS-CBN and Manila Bulletin will handle the debate either in Southern or Central Luzon on April 24 while GMA 7 and Philippine Daily Inquirer will organize the presidential debate in Mindanao on Feb. 21.

The vice presidential debate will be organized in Metro Manila by CNN Philippines and Business Mirror on April 10.

According to Bautista, the debates are part of the Comelec’s efforts to make the coming elections transparent and to make the candidates accountable for their campaign promises.

“It is the duty of the voters to vote while it is the responsibility of the Comelec to count the votes right. We don’t care who the voters vote for because we respect each and every vote.  But we, at the Comelec, want the voters to make informed judgment,” he maintained.