Manual elections still a possibility in May - Melo

With less than four months before the May 10 elections, the head of the government’s poll body expressed doubt that the country would be able to pull off a fully automated elections. “Hindi pa rin natin masabi. Kunyari isusubo mo na lang, nahulog pa (We really cannot tell. Something might happen on the last minute). Nothing is sure in this life," said Commission on Elections (Comelec) chairman Jose Melo in an ambush interview on Monday. If worst comes to worst, Melo said they would resort to conduct manual elections. Melo issued the statement after the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) aired concerns over the automated elections. The CBCP, in a pastoral letter, urged the Comelec to prepare fall back positions that can be quickly adopted when some glitches in the system and in the logistics prop up.

The preparations for the May 10 elections have been marred by significant delays. Last November, the poll body had already said that election preparations were behind by a month from the original timeline. [See: Poll preparations behind by a month - 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. [See: Costlier shipping delayed poll machine delivery - Comelec] Melo said Smartmatic-TIM has since committed to deliver about 9,600 machines weekly. He also assured the public that all the 82,200 PCOS machines needed for the May polls would be delivered by February. Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said that the extended registration granted by the SC had also set back their preparations by three to four weeks. [See: ‘Extension of voters listup to delay poll preparations further’] The first round of registration ran from December 2008 to October 31, 2009 but was later extended to December 21, 22, 23, 28, and 29 because of the SC ruling. As of January 15, there are already a total number of 50,723,734 registered voters, 37,422 voting centers, and 76,340 clustered precincts. Commissioner Rene Sarmiento last Friday said pending disqualification cases filed against local and national candidates have delayed the printing of the official ballots by one more week. [See: Comelec: pending cases delay ballot printing for May polls] Larrazabal said they will be printing official ballots on January 30, instead of January 25 – supposedly the first day of printing as earlier announced. Instead, the Comelec will start the printing of voter education materials starting Monday. - KBK, GMANews.TV