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Power outages will not hamper May polls - Melo


After parts of Metro Manila and the Calabarzon region experienced rotating brownouts last Monday night, the Commission on Elections reiterated on Tuesday that such power outages will not hamper the conduct of the automated polls in May. At a press briefing, Comelec chairman Jose Melo assured that the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines would be able to run even without electricity. "No problem. The battery will run the PCOS," he said. Melo's assurance came as some parts of Metro Manila and the Calabarzon area experienced power outages due to the insufficiency in the power supply last Monday. The rotating brownouts revived fears that the same could happen on May 10 and therefore, affect the conduct of elections on that day. The militant Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) for one, called on energy officials to assure enough power supply during the election period. "The scenario of having rotating brownouts or power outages should definitely be avoided. Our energy officials must ensure adequate power supply and back-up power as a contingency measure. It is bad enough that there are already many questions in the automated elections, we don’t need to have power outages further complicating the matter," Bayan secretary general Renato Reyes Jr. said in an article on the Bayan Web site. No problem Earlier, Comelec law department head Ferdinand Rafanan said that the battery life of each PCOS unit is eight hours. Renato Garcia, IT consultant of Melo, added that the PCOS machines are a lot alike the regular portable computers available today. "Since these are practically laptops, backup power is not really a problem and consumption of energy is very low," he said. Garcia added that the machines can easily be plugged into any mobile generator brought by the parties. "So really it’s not that dependent," he said. Melo also said that voters need not worry because unlike manual elections, the automated polls would not be time-consuming. "Hindi naman kapareho dun sa nung manual pa abutin midnight tranpsort ballot boxes... dito wala, at six o'clock tapos na and shortly after that transmitted na (It's unlike manual elections wherein it takes you until midnight to transport ballot boxes... here by six o'clock, it's already over and shortly after the results will all have been transmitted already)," he said. - Kim Tan/RSJ, GMANews.TV

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