Surveillance cameras installed at NPO

To safeguard the production of official ballots and other election paraphernalia, surveillance cameras were installed at the National Printing Office.

The announcement was made by Commission on Elections (Comelec) Commissioner Resureccion Borra at a press conference at the poll body’s main office in Intramuros, Manila.

This plan to install these devices was earlier revealed by Commissioner Rene Sarmiento, who said that this was due to a resolution that was issued at the recently concluded Philippine Election Forum.

Borra also reiterated the poll body’s earlier statement that the NPO would maintain a 1:1 ratio in the printing of official ballots for the 45,005,000 registered voters in the country and 504,000 for the Overseas Absentee Voting.

As this developed, the Genuine Opposition is threatening to question before the Supreme Court the Comelec’s devolution of the printing of election forms to the National Printing Office (NPO), which subsequently subcontracted the job to a private firm.

GO campaign manager Sen. Sergio Osmeña III said also finds it "very disturbing" that the Comelec and NPO had entered into an agreement that allowed the NPO to lease machines of a private firm identified in the Newsbreak article as the Grand C Graphics.

In an interview with the STAR, Osmeña said the GO may go to court to question Comelec when it "devolved" a function that is "constitutionally" the agency’s responsibility.

"Why it is assigning jobs to NPO without bidding? It seems that Comelec is still up to its old tricks again," Osmena said. "Those guys ought to be brought to court."

But former oppositionist now running under the administration banner, Vicente Sotto III disclosed his camp raised the same issues before.

"I do not want to be the apologist for (Comelec chairman Benjamin) Ben Abalos but at that time, there was no anomaly found," Sotto said.

"If it’s the same situation as the situation before, there were explanations that were accepted then by the opposition. Everything was justified and made clear to the opposition so we shut up," Sotto said.

Sotto said their main concern in 2004 was the overprinting of ERs, which could be used by the administration to cheat.

"So we checked the records and found that there was really this overprinting. It was the same in 2001, 1998, 1995 and 1992. They always print reserves, only a certain percentage in case of loss or damage," Sotto said.

"If there were legal hitches, you expect us to keep quiet? Kung may anomalya eh di nagsisigaw na kami (If there was an anomaly we would have been shouting about it)," Sotto said.

Meantime, officials of the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) also denied the allegations made in the Newsbreak article.

"It is irresponsible of the author to say the least and even libelous that he would go as far as besmirch the corporation’s good reputation for the sole purpose of attracting more people to read his article," Pagcor spokesman Dodie King told The Star.

He added that the statement that Grand C Graphics is a favored printer of chairman Efraim Genuino is likewise baseless.

"We feel that our inclusion in this article is merely used as additional seasoning but not really organic to his story. Furthermore, none of his statements is backed by solid facts," he added. -James Mananghaya, Aurea Calica, Christina Mendez, Helen M. Flores