Comelec: pending cases delay ballot printing for May polls

Pending disqualification cases filed against local and national candidates for the May 2010 polls have delayed printing of the official ballots for the elections, the Philippines’ poll body said on Friday. As a result, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) will be printing official ballots on January 30, instead of January 25 – supposedly the first day of printing as earlier announced. Instead of producing the ballots, the Comelec will start the printing of voter education materials starting Monday, according to Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal. The Comelec “may have a minor adjustment in the printing of the [official] ballots because the names of the candidates have to be finalized," Commissioner Rene Sarmiento said on Friday. “We have to cleanse the list of candidates of those qualified, many are still pending with the Comelec." Sarmiento, the presiding commissioner of the poll body’s first division, could not say how many cases were pending with the Comelec, but he said these were numerous. “Hindi ko na nabilang, pero napakarami nila eh (I don’t know the total but there are so many pending cases)." Among the prominent cases pending before the Comelec are those against senators Manuel Villar Jr., Benigno “Noynoy" Aquino III, Manuel “Mar" Roxas II and Miriam Defensor-Santiago, former Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro, and actor Richard Gomez Sarmiento belied an allegation supposedly made by Roxas that the delays in the automation preparations were part of a conspiracy to prevent the election of new leaders. “With respect to the good senator, Comelec is not part of a conspiracy… I will be the first one to denounce or decry any kind of conspiracy that will prove the lack of fidelity to the trust of our people in this institution," he said. There are 50,086,054 registered voters for this year’s elections, excluding the 258,691 others who registered during the extended registration held on December 21, 22, 23, 28, and 29. The poll body earlier said it would only print so many ballots equivalent to the number of individuals who had registered during the first round of registration. As a result, those who registered in the extended round would only be able to vote if there would be unused ballots left. (See: Additional voters to become like chance passengers) One delay after another Last November, the poll body said election preparations were already behind by a month from the original timeline. It blamed the one-month delay in the delivery of the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines on the group Concerned Citizens’ Movement (CCM). The CCM was the group that filed a case with the Supreme Court asking the tribunal to void the allegedly illegal P7.2-million poll automation contract between Smartmatic/TIM and the Comelec. The court ruled in favor of Comelec. Poll machine supplier Smartmatic-TIM then promised to initially deliver 42,200 PCOS units by the end of November. However, the scheduled delivery was later moved to December. At the end of the year, only 7,200 units were delivered due to costly shipping and traffic problems during the holiday season, according to the Comelec. Comelec Chairman Jose Melo said Smartmatic-TIM had since committed to deliver about 9,600 machines weekly. The Comelec expects to have 50,000 PCOS machines in its custody by the end of this week, according to Melo. He assured the public that all the 82,200 PCOS machines needed for the May polls should have been manufactured and delivered by February. The poll body chief said that as stated in their contract with Smartmatic-TIM, the consortium should deliver all the poll machines before February 28. The supplier will be forced to pay a P7.5-million fine for every single day it misses the deadline, said Larrazabal. - RJAB Jr./ARCS, GMANews.TV