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Teachers’ groups dismayed over looming manual polls in 2010


A teacher looks forward to resting from tedious poll work
MANILA - High school teacher Gertrudes Cielo Farias will finally retire from work on Friday, after teaching for 36 years. As she retires, one of the things she will no longer have to do is serve in the upcoming 2010 elections. “But its okay, I’ve already done my part," said the still-energetic Farias, who had been served as an election officer since the Marcos regime. She is just one of 216 teachers in Ramon Magsaysay High School (RMHS) in Cubao, Quezon City, who are assigned and deployed to six nearby barangays as election officers, poll clerks and election inspectors. Farias recalled the process that teachers serving as election officers go through during election day, from picking up election paraphernalia and setting up the assigned election precinct before dawn, to keeping the order (while keeping one’s patience) when the people arrive to cast their votes.                      More
MANILA, Philippines – Not again. Teachers’ groups on Wednesday expressed dismay over the prospect of manual polls in 2010 as they would be burdened, once again, with the time-consuming, and oftentimes dangerous task of manually counting the votes. In phone interviews with GMANews.TV, heads of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) and the Teachers' Dignity Coalition (TDC) said they were frustrated with the pullout of Filipino firm Total Information Management (TIM) from its partnership with the Barbados-based Smartmatic Corp., putting in jeopardy the poll automation project. "We are going to be very disappointed kung di matutuloy yung poll automation. However, we may not have a choice," said University of the Philippines professor Antonio Tinio, ACT national chairperson. Tinio expressed doubt there would be enough time for a second bidding, one of the options being eyed by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) if TIM and Smartmatic failed to resolve their differences before the Friday deadline. The UP professor said they were all for full automation because it would ease the burden on teachers - who in past elections manually counted votes and transported election returns (ERs) from precincts to canvassing centers, among others. He noted, however, that the priority is still to have "credible" elections, whether automated or not. TDC chairperson Benjo Basas made a similar statement. "We look forward to the automation of elections in 2010. Dinadalangin namin yan bawat taon [We pray for that every year]," he said. Basas said manual counting has proven to be a huge burden for teachers, as it sometimes requires some of them to stay awake for 48 hours - yet ill-compensated. In the 2007 national elections, each public school teacher was paid P1,000 a day for three days, and was given P300 transportation allowance, Basas said. The teachers brought or bought their own food because under the law they were not allowed to accept food donations from any political party, he said. Greater risk Basas, who served in three elections including the 2007 polls, said manual elections also placed teachers' lives at greater risk because they would have to transport ERs themselves. In 2007, teacher Nellie Banaag and a poll watcher died after armed men barged into and set on fire a school serving as a polling place in Batangas province. Basas said the Comelec must exhaust all efforts to ensure that the upcoming elections would be automated, as mandated by Republic Act 9369, the law on election automation. At the very least, poll duties for teachers should be made voluntary and not mandatory, he said. But Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez said they would "have to get an amendment in the law" in reaction to Basas' suggestion. In a phone interview with GMANews.TV, Jimenez also said that even in automated polls, teachers would still play a significant role because they will still serve as board of election inspectors. While teachers would no longer have to count votes manually, they would still administer the distribution of ballots, check voters' lists, put indelible ink on the fingers of those who have voted, and operate the counting machines, the Comelec spokesman said. According to Jimenez, however, the number of teachers that would be needed would be cut from around 750,000 to only 400,000 because the number of precincts would be reduced from 250,000 to 80,000. Under the automated poll system, five teachers will be detailed per precinct. Comelec chair Jose Melo himself said the chances of automating the 2010 polls are "very, very slim" following TIM's sudden withdrawal. This has raised fears among several sectors, particularly critics of the Arroyo administration, who said manual elections might pave the way for another "Hello, Garci" scandal. The scandal involved former Comelec commissioner for Virgilio Garcillano, who President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo allegedly ordered over a series of phone conversations to pad the votes in her favor in some areas in Mindanao during the 2004 elections. Both President Arroyo and Garcillano denied any involvement in the alleged rigging of the 2004 polls. Earlier, former Comelec chair Christian Monsod said that the Comelec can resort to partial automation – that is manual voting and counting at the precinct level with automated canvassing. He told GMA News' Ivan Mayrina that manual counting should not necessarily be looked upon as non-credible, as the 1992 and 1998 elections were not automated but were still "generally accepted by the people as [having] credible results." "It's only in 2004 where there were problems with the results, and Comelec people were involved in alleged irregularities," Monsod noted. - GMANews.TV
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