Comelec urges Congress panel to assess 2010 polls

MANILA, Philippines - An official of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) has asked the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on Poll Automation (JCOC) to convene and assess the May 2010 elections.

Comelec Commissioner Augusto Lagman yesterday said JCOC’s findings are essential to prevent the mistakes in the country’s first automated polls from being repeated in the 2013 midterm elections.

“I think the JCOC should re-convene,” he said.

“They have not reconvened after the 2010 elections. They should have made an assessment of last year’s elections.”

Republic Act 9369, the Poll Automation Law, tasked the JCOC to recommend to the Comelec “the most appropriate, secure, applicable and cost-effective technology” for the country’s elections.

The JCOC will have to base its recommendation on the multi-agency Comelec Advisory Council (CAC) which was designated by the law to study the automated election system the country would adopt.

Lagman said the CAC is not mandated to assess last year’s elections wherein the Comelec had used the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines leased from Venezuelan-based Smartmatic International Corp.

“That (JCOC’s recommendation) is important because we want to find out the lessons that we could learn from the election last year, especially now that we are preparing for another election in 2013,” he said.

 Issues concerning the PCOS units have not been settled, including the removal of machines’ capacity to recognize digital signatures, Lagman said.            

He believes that reconvening the JCOC would be timely since the CAC is also set to convene soon.

Last Wednesday, CAC chairman Louis Napoleon Casambre announced the names of the new members of the council following a month-long selection process. 

The members are: Prof. Rommel Feria of the University of the Philippines (academe), George Kintanar of the Chief Information Officers Forum Foundation, Betina Quimson of the Philippine Software Industry Association, and Rogelio Quevedo of the Philippine Electronics and Telecommunications Federation (information and communication technology). 

The council is also composed of two members from non-government electoral reform organizations: Luie Tito Guia of the Legal Network for Truthful Elections and Henrietta de Villa of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting.

The three government representatives to the council are Science and Technology Undersecretary Fortunato de la Peña, Education Undersecretary Alberto Muyot, and Casambre, in his capacity as executive director of the Information and Communications Technology Office.