Senators have expressed hope that newly appointed Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Jose Melo will bring back “lost glory” to the electoral body and ensure that the next presidential elections in 2010 are not marred with fraud.
The Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan), on the other hand, advised Melo yesterday to take into account poll officials implicated in the 2004 and 2007 election fraud who are still working at the poll body.
“Justice Melo faces a formidable, insurmountable challenge and this is how to make the 2010 elections credible to redeem the country from its flawed electoral system,” Sen. Joker Arroyo said in an interview.
While the former justice’s qualification is out of the question, Arroyo expressed hope that Melo is up to the job.
“The concern should not be so much whether Melo is a good man for the job, it is whether, with the crosses he has to bear with the job, he can clean up the morass that is the Comelec,” Arroyo said.
Instead of whining about the computerization of the electoral system, Arroyo urged the opposition to join his renewed call for the modernization of the electoral process.
“The opposition must join in the computerization of our jurassic electoral system,” Arroyo added.
Senate President Manuel Villar Jr., Majority Leader Francis Pangilinan and Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. also wish that Melo can win back the people’s trust in the election body.
Both Villar and Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, in an interview over dzBB, believe that Melo is “very capable” of doing his job.
Last Saturday, President Arroyo appointed Melo, a former associate justice of the Supreme Court, as the new Comelec chairman.
Before his appointment, Melo served 23 years in the judiciary and later as associate justice of the Supreme Court from which he retired in 2002.
Melo also served as chair of the Melo Commission, an independent probe body that investigated the killing of militant activists and journalists.
The commission was well-lauded by the international community because of its transparent and forthright report.
“We hope he will have the guts and the political will to usher in genuine reforms by ridding the Comelec of its corrupt officials and personnel and my advice is that he begins with finding and prosecuting Lintang Bedol,” Pangilinan said.
“We are pinning our hopes on the new Comelec chair to restore the integrity and trust in the institution and to have the courage and the decisiveness to clean up the mess it is in,” the majority leader said in a separate statement.
Putting Bedol behind bars would help boost the Comelec chairman’s resolve to restore order in the commission.
Prior to Melo’s appointment, the Comelec had been linked to several election-related irregularities in the past, including the botched Mega Pacific deal, the “Hello Garci” controversy and the resignation of former Comelec chair Benjamin Abalos after being linked to alleged bribery on the national broadband deal with China’s ZTE Corp.
“We wish him well and we hope he will succeed in restoring the sorely needed faith and trust in the Comelec as an institution whose image and reputation have been tarnished by scandals and controversies,” Pangilinan said.
According to Pangilinan, Melo’s task is daunting but certainly isn’t insurmountable provided he is able to marshal critical support from various sectors to rebuild the image of the institution.
“The Comelec can be likened to a person who has been beaten black and blue because of the string of scandals and controversies,” he added.
He said Justice Melo has his work cut out for him.
“The challenge is to bring the Comelec back to shape in time for 2010 and beyond. It’s a gargantuan task requiring leadership 36 hours a day. He will need all the help he can get,” he said.
Remove scoundrels
Pimentel shared his colleague’s sentiment since he believe that Melo has a lot of cleaning up to do at the Comelec, starting with weeding out and prosecuting field election supervisors and other officials involved in fraudulent practices, especially during the 2004 and 2007 elections.
Pimentel, father of losing 2007 senatorial candidate Koko, said the integrity and credibility of Comelec cannot be fully restored unless these notoriously undesirable and discredited election officials are removed and punished.
“Ironically, these scoundrels in the Comelec, instead of being booted out and charged with criminal offenses, were promoted to higher positions, courtesy of the previous Comelec leadership,” he said.
“Let us give him a chance to discharge his constitutional duties and to implement electoral reforms,” he said.
Pimentel, however, expressed disappointment that President Arroyo has turned a deaf ear to the long-standing proposal of the opposition for at least one of its nominees to be named to the Comelec.
He said an important task that could serve as an acid test to Melo’s capability and independence is the dismantling of the syndicate of Comelec officials and professional fraud experts responsible for the dagdag-bawas operations that tainted the results of the 2004 presidential and 2007 senatorial elections.
Pimentel said piles of evidence of the nefarious activities of this fraud syndicate have surfaced in the ongoing recount of the votes cast in 44 towns in Maguindanao and other Mindanao provinces in connection with the electoral protest of his son, Genuine Opposition senatorial candidate Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III against administration Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri before the Senate Electoral Tribunal.
Cheats likely to remain till 2010
The left-leaning group Bayan also noted that these officials are likely to remain influential in the 2010 elections, and their continued stay in key positions in Comelec would remain a blot on the integrity of the upcoming national elections.
“The initial test for Melo would be his action on what happened in 2004 and 2007. Melo’s failure to root out election cheats (in Comelec), who now occupy strategic positions in many regions, will continue to cast doubt on the credibility of the 2010 polls.”
According to Bayan, Melo must investigate recent cases of electoral fraud and hold officials accountable, no matter how high their ranks may be, in order to prove that he is different from former Comelec chair Abalos.
The group also urged Melo not to balk from holding high officials accountable, even the President.
Bayan claimed that one known weakness of Melo during his term as chairman of the Commission tasked to investigate the spate of unexplained killings in the country, was that he allegedly shielded the President from any accountability.
While Melo acknowledged the possible involvement of the military in the killing of activists, militant organizations expressed disappointment that he cleared the President of any fault on the pressing issue of human rights violation in the country.
“If this is the way he will act while Comelec chair, expect the same problems to arise in the run-up to 2010. It is common knowledge that the biggest election cheats are those from the camp of the Arroyo administration,” Bayan said. – Katherine Adraneda, Artemio Dumlao