A tougher challenge

The last time I bumped into retired Supreme Court Justice Jose Melo, he said he was quitting the fact-finding panel that was tasked to unearth the truth about unexplained killings.

This was last year, when the life of the Melo Commission had been extended by President Arroyo. The United Nations had sent a special rapporteur to Manila, who later announced that the military was in a state of denial about extrajudicial killings.

Melo sighed that with both the military and left-wing groups refusing to cooperate fully with his commission, it was impossible to learn the truth about the killings.

Left-wing militants distrusted the commission from its inception, believing it was simply an instrument for whitewashing the truth. And the military did not tell the commission anything that it had not already said in public about allegations of extrajudicial killings.

I’m not sure if Melo ever bothered to quit the commission. The panel just died a natural death, forgotten by the public.

Now Melo is back on the national stage, in a tougher job, as head of one of the most distrusted institutions in this country.

As the new chairman of the Commission on Elections (Comelec), can Melo clean up the mess that Benjamin Abalos left behind?

* * *

The first order of business for Melo is to prepare for the general elections in May 2010. The official campaign period starts early in 2010; fund-raising and actual campaigning, including ad placements and the display of materials extolling the virtues of prospective candidates, start much earlier.

Voters’ lists must be cleaned up. There are currently two sets in existence; which one to use is at the discretion of election personnel. One is the old list, with voters’ names handwritten and bearing thumbprints. These voluminous piles of paper are yellowing with age.

The other list is computerized, bearing the names of new registrants, with addresses supposedly updated to prevent double or multiple voting. When glitches and discrepancies were found, the Comelec allowed the use of the old lists in the 2004 elections. The same lists were used last year.

The computerized voters’ lists, for which we had to re-register, must have been destroyed. Or they may be rotting away together with those 1,999 computers and vote-counting software that taxpayers paid for with P1.2 billion, no return, no exchange, and for which we continue to pay a fortune simply for storage.

As a Newsbreak Online story pointed out, Melo faces a Comelec that is in dire financial straits.

This is a serious problem for someone who says he wants the country to hold its first automated elections in 2010.

A law passed last year paves the way for a new poll automation program after the Supreme Court voided the P1.2-billion deal between the Comelec and Mega Pacific.

But poll automation doesn’t come cheap. If Melo wants automated elections in 2010, he must rush the bidding for a new project. In any rush, he must prevent anyone from earning a fat commission from the project, because the stink eventually comes out and it can taint him even if he gets no share from the corruption.

* * *

Those who want Melo to resolve questions about vote-rigging in the 2004 presidential race involving former Comelec commissioner Virgilio Garcillano are asking too much.

But Melo can try to find the missing Lintang Bedol, who is accused of tampering with election returns in Maguindanao during last year’s senatorial race.

Melo will also have to be more careful about the company he keeps on the golf course, after the broadband scandal from China to Wack-Wack that brought down Abalos. The unresolved issue is set to be revived by the Senate this week.

Melo’s principal focus is 2010, and seeing to it that the general elections will be clean, orderly and modern.

Okay, even Americans can’t count their votes in an orderly way. But in many other countries, votes are cast and tallied and the results known in one day. If they can do it, why can’t we?

Our voting system is closer to Afghanistan’s, where donkeys are used to deliver voting paraphernalia to many areas, and where filled ballots must be guarded around the clock by interested parties. Like Filipinos, Afghan candidates also have a disturbing tendency to eliminate their rivals through murder.

The Comelec chief has no control over political violence during election periods, but the poll body can initiate formal complaints against those who buy votes or use violence and intimidation to undermine the voting process.

Melo can also make sure that by the time May 2010 rolls around, every Comelec official and employee is well-versed on the new crime called electoral sabotage, and will know how to catch violators.

* * *

Apart from cleaning up the Comelec, Melo must deal with politicians who blatantly disregard elections laws. These include senators and congressmen up for re-election, a number of whom routinely ring up Comelec officials to ask about the status of their votes during the long count. Only when the “Hello, Garci” vote-rigging scandal erupt did many politicians realize that such phone calls could constitute acts of impropriety.

Melo can also support feeble efforts in both chambers of Congress to enact laws on campaign finance as well as other electoral reforms.

Being a former member of the Supreme Court, Melo can initiate moves to make special electoral tribunals speed up the resolution of election protests. The slow resolution of such protests robs true winners of their mandate and encourages vote rigging.

The public has one basic wish from the Comelec: modern, credible elections. This means casting votes and counting them quickly and efficiently. That sounds simple enough, but it can’t be done in this country.

After trying to ferret out the truth about unexplained killings, Melo faces a tougher challenge. Simply laying the groundwork for a modern voting system can be achievement enough for him.