Comelec exec grilled over order to send 1,600 back-up CF cards nationwide

Congressional leaders on Wednesday grilled a top official of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) for issuing a memorandum that directed the delivery of 1,600 blank back-up compact flash cards nationwide a day before the May 10 elections. Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, House Speaker Prospero Nograles, Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr., House Majority Leader Arthur Defensor Sr., and Cagayan de Oro City Rep. Rufus Rodriguez all questioned Comelec executive director Jose Tolentino for issuing the memo without the prior approval of the Comelec en banc. The memorandum, dated May 9 and addressed to all regional directors and all provincial directors, said 20 blank CF cards and two card burners would be deployed to each province to replace defective CF cards. With 80 provinces, 1,600 additional CF cards were delivered nationwide. Tolentino said that since the delivery of back-up CF cards was an "administrative" matter that he was in charge of, he did not need the prior approval of Comelec commissioners. "We believe that since I am the one managing the affairs for the project management office I don't have to wait for the Commission en banc. Especially so since that was a weekend and it would be also difficult for me to gather all the commissioners for them to meet and resolve that issue," Tolentino said. Tolentino said he made the decision because Smartmatic officials said they did not have enough technical people on the field to replace defective CF cards immediately. The memo was only issued May 9 because he and other concerned officials still had to discuss contingency measures when problems with the CF cards cropped up during the first week of May. No additional back-up CF cards were deployed to Metro Manila because it is where the Comelec central office is located, Tolentino said. Tolentino said only about 400 back-up CF cards were actually used in the provinces, and that he was willing to hand the chamber a written report of the areas where CF cards malfunctioned. Congressional leaders, however, were incredulous. "Here you are, a third high employee or offfical of the Comelec, doing things on your own and saying that the deployment of 1,200 CF cards is a small matter? I really find that not quite acceptable unless you can convince me that that is necessarily true," said Pimentel. For his part, Nograles said: "Is that within his authority, without an en banc, as executive director?" Comelec chairman Jose Melo said Tolentino's move was acceptable. "When we assumed the office in the Comelec we did away with the so-called commissioners-in-charge. We found that arrangement not in accordance with the concept of the commission as a whole so on May 9, that was a Sunday, the day before the elections, the commissioners were dispersed and executive director Tolentino did not [call for the convening of the Comelec en banc]," Melo said. "But he reported immediately to us the following day, on the day of the election," said Melo. During the House committee on suffrage and electoral reform's hearing earlier in the day where Tolentino's memo was revealed, Rodriguez implied that additional CF cards could have been used by "unscrupulous" people to cheat in the elections. But Smartmatic Asia president Cesar Flores and Department of Science and Technology (DOST) official Denis Villorente quickly debunked Rodriguez's speculation. Because the back-up cards were blank, they could only be read by the counting machines if they were configured by provincial DOST personnel. The DOST personnel can only configure the cards once they have the go signal from Smartmatic, which would only give the code from their warehouse in Cabuyao upon verification of Comelec personnel and Smartmatic technicians on the field that the original CF cards actually malfunctioned on election day. Inquires on the conduct of the automated elections have delayed the canvassing of votes for president an vice president in Congress. — Jam Sisante/RSJ/KBK, GMANews.TV