Comelec to pay P50 M in royalties for ballot security markings

The Philippines will pay a P50-million royalty fee for using the design and software of ultraviolet (UV) marking technology to be implanted on its ballots. The Commission on Elections (Comelec) will have to pay one peso for every security marking used on a ballot, National Printing Office (NPO) director Servando Hizon told GMANews.TV over the phone. “The amount will be paid to the printer for royalty," he said. The printer is Nova, an NPO-accredited security printer which has a Europe-based foreign partner that is responsible for the markings being implanted on every ballot. Hizon issued the statement after a Comelec official who refused to be named suggested that the NPO insisted on putting its security markings on the ballots because it will reportedly benefit from it. “Every UV marking would entail additional cost… so you figure it out," the source told reporters. However, the NPO director said that neither the agency nor its officials will not get any money from printing the UV markings. “Wala kaming makukuha (We will not get anything)," he said, adding that they are only there to play their role for the smooth conduct of the polls. Poll machine supplier Smartmatic-TIM would not be paying any part of the cost of putting the NPO’s additional security markings on the ballots, its spokesman Gene Gregorio told GMANews.TV in text message. Earlier in the day, the Comelec admitted that the ballots for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) did not have NPO’s security markings due to time constraints in machine configuration. But the poll body was quick to point out that the markings were not “critical" in authenticating the ballots. However, it also said that the ballots for all the other regions will have both the Comelec’s five security features and the NPO’s UV markings. As of January 15, there were already 50,723,734 registered voters. But the Comelec earlier said that it would only print ballots based on the number of voters who had registered from December 2008 to October 31, 2009. - GMANews.TV