Safeguarding our elections

Based on its record of past performance as the election watchdog of our country, the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) is indeed one of the independent Constitutional Commissions with the most unsavory reputation. It has not been up to par in doing its job of ensuring honest, orderly and peaceful elections. The prevailing public perception is that, since it was formed pursuant to the 1987 Constitution, it has miserably failed to carry out its most basic function of enforcing and administering “all laws and regulations relative to the conduct of an election, plebiscite, initiative referendum and recall.”

And this disreputable public perception became uglier when the automated election was first conducted in our country starting 2010 pursuant to Republic Act 9369. Since then, it appears that cheating in the elections has been automated and therefore became easier but harder to detect with the use of the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines purchased by the COMELEC from SMARTMATIC-TIM (Total Information Management Corporation). Eventually, it was discovered that the various safeguards provided by the Automated Election Law were not, and/or could not be fully satisfied with the use of said machines because of the many loopholes in the contract and the inherent defects in the machines. Thus, they have even been ridiculously but aptly dubbed as the “hocus pcos” machines.

The sad part here is that the COMELEC not only tolerated but even appeared to defend the supplier and the use of its machines. In fact, the COMELEC utilized them again in the 2013 elections even without ensuring that there would be no repeat of failure to provide the safeguards in the 2010 elections. Hence more “hocus pocus” apparently occurred in the last elections. Very evident this time is the 60/30/10 pattern reflected in the election returns in favor administration party candidates, candidates of the main opposition party and the independent candidates, respectively.

With this stubborn stance of the COMELEC, the common observation of most Filipinos after 2013 is that the elections in our country are now under the supervision and control of Smartmatic-TIM, a foreign corporation, with a shady reputation. It would appear indeed that the COMELEC has already abdicated its function in favor of this company or is being dictated by it as to the conduct of our elections particularly in the use of its dubious machines.

COMELEC’s dubious reputation obviously makes it more difficult to fill up the vacant positions of the Chairman and the two Commissioners whose term ended early this year. Decent, honest, dedicated, honorable and qualified individuals would tend to shy away from the call to serve in those positions simply because they would not want to spoil their reputation or more so because they will be facing a formidable, challenging and thankless task of salvaging a seriously damaged government agency.

Thus it is quite a pleasant surprise to learn that a well esteemed fellow Atenean, and colleague in this newspaper, Andres Bautista took up such challenge and accepted the appointment as the new Chairman of COMELEC. On second thought however, it is really not surprising anymore, because he also previously accepted a more formidable challenge when he served as Chairman of another government agency with a damaged reputation – the Presidential Commission on Government (PCGG). As PCCG Chairman, he did an excellent job of rebuilding its more disgraceful name and detrimental situation after less than five years in office.

But this latest challenge to Andy Bautista appears to be more formidable and difficult. He entered the game together with the two other new Commissioners Rowena Guanzon and Sheriff Abas, at the last two minutes. It is barely a year before the 2016 Presidential elections when they assumed office. Their task became more difficult because their hands are tied due to the moves taken by their predecessors which appeared to be in preparation for their retirement in office.

Thus, when the COMELEC unanimously decided last August 13, 2015 to lease 93,977 all new Optical Mark Reader (OMR) machines worth P7.9 billion from the same Smartmatic-TIM for use in the 2016 elections, Bautista as the new Chairman got a lot of flak from all sides. The general impression created by such a move is that COMELEC is really under the thumbs of said joint venture company – that COMELEC is being forced to use its machines despite their many flaws and defects. This charge acquires more validity considering that the OMR is just another name, the generic name, of the notorious PCOS.

The severest criticism comes from the IT sector especially the advocates of the hybrid system of election called PATAS, where the voting will be done manually while the counting will be automated. But as Bautista pointed out, such system has operational and logistical challenges considering that our election is synchronized with so many names of candidates to be written on the ballot, from the President, VP, Senators, Congressmen, down to the positions in the local government units.

But let us give Bautista and the COMELEC, the benefit of the doubt. They are really pressed for time and their hands are tied by the acts of the previous COMELEC officials who apparently saw to it that Smartmatic-TIM will be part of our automated elections. Let us just wait and see if the COMELEC under Bautista can ensure that the following violations of our automated elections law committed in the 2010 and 2013 elections will not happen this time:

First, lack of source code review;

Second, the proclamation of winners without the results of the Random Manual Audit (RMA) being submitted to the Board of Canvassers;  

Third, lack of digital signatures of the members of the Board of Election Inspectors in the election returns transmitted to the COMELEC for canvassing; and

Fourth, corruption of the Compact Flash cards that may affect the correctness of the election returns.

If all these safeguards can be satisfied then the automated elections will still be credible even with the use of these machines. After all, the credibility of the automated elections entirely depends on the officials of COMELEC enforcing the laws and regulations.