Senate assures passage of poll automation budget for 2010

(Updated 11:41 a.m.) MANILA, Philippines - The chairman of the Senate finance committee on Thursday assured the approval of the Commission on Election’s proposed P11.302-billion supplemental budget for the automation of the 2010 elections without any reservation. "We will approve it as a supplemental budget. We are not going to impose any condition, we are not going to require any kind of technology or impose any specification," Senator Edgardo Angara said during the hearing on the supplemental budget. Angara told poll officials present during the hearing that the only thing the Senate will ask from the Comelec is to ensure that the procurement of the technology would be open and transparent and that the poll body account for its decision in choosing the technology and the provider. "The only condition that we will impose is that the process of procurement should be open and transparent and that the decision on which technology, which vendor, what specifications to follow are exclusively the Comelec’s decision. They have to account for that decision," Angara said. He added that the Senate would push for full automation of the elections. "We will stand by full automation but we don’t want also to be deaf to the complaint of some of the House members," Angara told reporters in a chance interview after the hearing. Full automation For his part, Comelec chairman Jose Armando Melo said the poll body will try to convince the House of Representatives to go for the full automation, saying proposals to have a hybrid or mix of manual and computerized elections would be more costly. He said the poll body will heed the suggestion of Angara to come up with a question and answer primer on automated elections for the education and address the worries of the congressmen. "We will try to convince them again to go to full automation," Melo told reporters after the hearing. He said if the Comelec will employ a manual system for the elections of local officials up to the congressmen and automated system for national posts they would need additional P2 billion to their budget. "Hindi naman tayo makaka-save ng gastusan dyan. We will be distributing the same number of machines all over the Philippines sa automation pagkatapos niyan dadagdag pa nga tayo ng P2 billion more for the local system so lalaki ang ating gastusan [We will not able to save with that kind of system]," Melo said. He said the other proposal which is manual voting and open system or automated transmission of elections results would cost P9 billion to P10 billion, the same as the cost of full automation. He said in the open system the poll workers would transcribe the result of the manual voting, encode it in the computer and transmit it. "Ang regular national elections ang ginagastos ay P5 billion na kung [In the regular national elections we spend some P5 billion and with the] open system you have to add, according to the proponents, 4 billion or more. It may be around P9 billion to P10 billion which is the same amount almost as full automation," Melo added. He further said that the possibility of result manipulation is more likely in the manual voting system than in the automated elections. Second reading On Wednesday night, the House approved on second reading the Comelec-proposed supplemental budget. In an interview with reporters after the approval, Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Villafuerte said: "The appropriation is approved subject to the condition that before disbursement can be made, a special legislation is approved that will ensure clean, honest, credible elections in 2010." Villafuerte said a special House panel, of which he is a member, will craft the special legislation in coordination with Comelec officials. He said the legislation would include details on the manner of voting, mode of canvassing, and transmission of ballots. He hopes that the measure will be filed by Friday. Comelec chair Jose Melo had earlier said the budget for the automation of the 2010 polls should be released by April because the agency needed to start early on the bidding for voting machines and the subsequent publishing of its terms of reference, which he said was very detailed. The supplemental appropriation is on top of the P5.3-billion allocation of the Commission on Elections as part of the P1.415-trillion budget for 2009. Of the P11.302 billion, P9.960 billion will go to the acquisition of automated poll machines. - GMANews.TV