Palace may settle for partial poll automation

MANILA, Philippines - Malacañang said it could settle for partial automation of the 2010 elections as long as it is legal and all means to implement a full automation have been totally exhausted.

“If there could not be full automation, let’s follow the law and do partial (automation) in pilot areas in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao,” deputy presidential spokesman Anthony Golez said yesterday. “I know we have aspirations but if it can’t be done, what’s stated in the law?”

He said partial automation is the “minimum” and “we must be doing what’s within our laws.”

Golez also said the Arroyo administration “is caught in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation in its efforts to automate the elections next year.

If the Commission on Elections (Comelec) would resort to manual counting, the administration would be blamed or accused of sabotaging the automation. If the polls would be automated, detractors would insist that the firms that bagged the contract are connected to the First Family, Golez said.

He also welcomed looming congressional investigations on the current snag in the automation project so the public may see through the “purely malicious allegations of critics.”

Meanwhile, a Palace official said yesterday Total Information Management (TIM) was involved in quick count operations for the opposition in the 2004 elections.

Undersecretary Danilo Consumido of the Office of External Affairs made the disclosure following allegations by Bayan Muna Rep. Teodoro Casiño that TIM has links to First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo.

He said TIM is not connected with Mr. Arroyo.

“Its owner (Jose Mari) Antuñez is (an) opposition supporter,” Consumido said in a text message.

He said TIM conducted quick count operations at the house of Melo Santiago, a restaurant owner and associate of former President Joseph Estrada, during the 2004 elections for the camp of the late Fernando Poe Jr.

“They abandoned quick count when President Arroyo was winning,” Consumido said. “In other words, they knew GMA won.”

He said he got the information from a reliable TIM insider.

 ‘Not late for partial automation’

Meanwhile, an information technology (IT) expert said it was not too late for a clean and transparent 2010 national elections through a partial election computerization.

Gus Lagman, in an interview with Ricky Carandang on ANC Wednesday night, said the Comelec still has time to go back to the drawing board to partially automate next year’s elections.

Lagman, co-founder of the STI chain of computer schools and former National Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) IT consultant, said that partial automation should focus on the canvassing stage of the electoral process.

“There’s still time to redraw their poll automation plan,” Lagman added.

He explained that the electoral process was divided into three stages, namely the actual voting conducted in the morning until afternoon, the counting of the votes done in the precincts which takes an average of 12 hours, and the last stage which is the canvassing of the votes which takes 40 days in a manual election process.

To prevent large-scale cheating in an election, Lagman said that the canvassing stage should at least be automated.

“The canvassing is where you should focus,” Lagman said.

He said that Comelec would have a doable plan for poll automation, even if only partial. – Paolo Romero, Aurea Calica, Rainier Allan Ronda