EDITORIAL - Choices for the Comelec

After “Hello, Garci” and Lintang Bedol’s confessed poll manipulation, you’d think authorities would know enough to pick people of integrity and impartiality for the Commission on Elections. The last politician named to the Comelec, Benjamin Abalos, gave the nation the ZTE scandal.

Ignoring lessons of the past, the administration of daang matuwid is currently reaping flak for its recent appointments to the Comelec. Commissioner Grace Padaca has yet to get the nod of the Commission on Appointments. The Office of the Ombudsman believes she should not be confirmed by the CA until she has been cleared of graft and malversation charges for allowing a non-government organization to manage a P25-million credit facility for rice farmers without public bidding when she was governor of Isabela. Padaca may yet be cleared, but this should have come first before the appointment.

Now Malacañang is again under fire for the latest appointment. Not only is Macabangkit Lanto a former congressman closely identified with the campaign manager of the administration’s senatorial slate; he was also unseated from his congressional post by the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal in connection with, of all offenses, poll fraud. Lanto can shout his innocence to the heavens, but the HRET decision is on official record and has not been withdrawn or altered.

A lawyer picked together with Lanto, Maria Bernadette Sardillo, turned down her appointment after Malacañang announced it, raising questions about coordination in the appointment process. Sardillo once served as lawyer of Padaca’s political rival, former Isabela governor Benjamin Dy.

Out of nearly 100 million Filipinos, there must be two qualified individuals who can fill the last two vacancies in the Comelec without drawing controversy. This will be the first major electoral exercise under the watch of President Aquino, who won on a reform platform and who has promised new ways of doing business in the country. One of the sectors crying out for reforms is the electoral process. Overseeing those reforms is the Comelec. Its members must be above reproach.