Senators seek breakdown of P11.3-B poll supplemental budget

MANILA, Philippines - The approval of a P11.3-billion supplemental budget for the 2010 polls hit a snag of sorts Monday after poll officials failed to explain some items in the budget. Commission on Elections (Comelec) officials could not fully answer questions posed by finance committee chairman Edgardo Angara and Sen. Panfilo Lacson on issues of communication and storage. "We will ask you for a breakdown of all this," Angara said after asking Comelec executive director Jose Tolentino Jr. some questions on the items in the supplemental budget. One of the questions Angara asked involved the lower budget for transmission compared to the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) election. "Why is it ... when in the ARMM elections your transmission budget is P100 million? That to me is one of the attractions of automation. If you cannot transmit it quickly move forward, snail paced din ang announcement ng result [The announcement of results will be snail-paced]," he said. Tolentino said that upon the recommendation of its advisory council, Comelec agreed to use leased machines at the precinct level. The lease cost would be P8.16 billion where 14.2 percent of the lease cost will go to services including warehousing, storage, and setting up of polling places. He also said the Comelec will spend P60 million for transmission, with the telecom network providing the hardware. Angara also brought up the security of the data to be transmitted. Tolentino said the data will be "encrypted with several layers of security." For his part, Lacson questioned how the Comelec figured the 14.2 percent for storage and other fees. Tolentino had said storage fees would involve P1.166 billion. "Right now you don't have amount for storage? How did you arrive at P1.166 billion if you don't have the breakdown?" Lacson said. "(Of the) P1.166 billion, (it is) up to (the service) provider who will determine how much to use for storage, deployment, installation," Tolentino replied. Lacson pointed out that the government is now spending P3 million a month to use counting machines from Mega Pacific that were never used in any election. "Right now we're paying P3M a month for machines that were never used," he said. To which, Tolentino said: "If you have this for lease and several services to be provided we computed it. We wanted to give services at 20% of total cost of lease, we realized there were so many activities to be undertaken, we could provide 20% for services because we did not increase cost of budget." - GMANews.TV