Comelec deadlock imperils July polls

Does Erap know that the scripts his propagandists keep concocting are backfiring on him? Their "tip" about his snubbing President Arroyo, who had no plan to visit him at his hospital VIP suite-detention to begin with, had him looking so uncouth. Then, the ex-president said that Hilario Davide was not his first choice for Chief Justice in 1998, but that he only gave in to the intercession of tycoon Lucio Tan. What Erap thought would be a shocker elicited only snickers, coming as it did from someone who recently slipped into confessing that he’s alias Jose Velarde after all, when throughout his impeachment trial he claimed to not know any such name. Davide’s sterling leadership of the judiciary, how work ethic and decisions speak for themselves. But assuming that what he said is true, his relenting to Tan only showed that he’s spineless and indecisive. No wonder Erap’s again the butt of text jokes. Like the one that says he confessed to being Jose Velarde so that only Joseph Estrada would go to jail. Or the one that says he’s no longer mad that Cardinal Sin had left him out because, if there’s a Domingo de Ramos and a Sabado de Gloria, there’s an Ass Wednesday after all.

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Yesterday in an en banc session the seven Comelec commissioners were scheduled to discuss their rules and procedures. Ten leaders of major political parties had implored them the previous day to fix the feuds that have deadlocked their work for ten months. "Define among yourselves once and for all," said Speaker Jose de Venecia of the ruling Lakas, "what matters should be decided collegially in en banc and what can be left to Chairman Alfredo Benipayo to act on as his administraive duties." The five commissioners present nodded. If the outcome of the next day’s collegial session would be a gauge of things to come, the election body is in for more months of deadlock.

To begin with, no session took place. Right after their Monday talk with the party bosses, Benipayo cancelled the en banc set for Tuesday afternoon. In the morning, he merely called the commissioners to a raffling of complaints to resolve from last November’s election in the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao. Commissioner Mehold Sadain asked when the next en banc would be. Benipayo said Thursday, but only to discuss the unattended agenda of yesterday’s cancelled session, that is, pending promotions and pay raises. Commissioner Luz Tancangco suggested that they discuss the ground rules first, after which administrative (personnel) matters would flow naturally. She got no reply. "So far, this is his seventh cancellation of an en banc," Sadain said, "in which we would have resolved the rules and procedures."

And so the Comelec remains in deadlock. On one side are President Arroyo’s yet-unconfirmed nominees: Benipayo, Resurreccion Borra and Florentino Tuason. On the other are Erap appointees: Sadain, Tancangco, Rufino Javier and Ralph Lantion.

Administration, opposition and other party heads are anxious. Coming up in July are synchronized barangay council and Sangguniang Kabataan elections, the former originally scheduled for May and the latter for November. The two polls each have their own sets of voters: 18 years or older for barangays, 15-24 years old for the SK. A divided election body might not be able to oversee the sanctity of the ballot.

Also in the works are parallel bills in the senate and House of Representatives for absentee voting. Once enacted, the law would allow the registration of seven million overseas Filipino workers, and voting for national officials right in their host-countries in America, Middle East, Europe and Asia. It would also entail the creation of new congressiuonal seats for OFW representatives. A feuding election body would only export to the host countries the perennial problems of RP elections: flying voters, unlocated polling precincts, dagdag-bawas (vote padding-shaving). A three-point Comelec modernization plan could solve the three problems. But this, too, has fallen victim to the deadlock. For four years from 1996 to 2000, a succession of Comelec chairmen and commissioners had studied the solutions:

* computerized list of voters, with photographs and fingerprints, as basis for issuance of plastic tamper-proof ID cards for use on election days;

* reassignment of precincts by street blocks instead of alphabetical surnames, so that voters in each will be neighbors who know each other;

* automated counting machines to speed up tallying of votes and canvassing of returns, thus lessening the chance of result-tampering.

Congress had approved the programs through three laws, and gave initial funds for implementation. Comelec held in Sept. 2000 a public bidding for the four-year, P6.5-billion voter registration and identification system (VRIS). It also began that month the precinct mapping. Held in abeyance until preparations start for the 2004 presidential-congressional elections was the automation plan. Benipayo upon assuming office in March 2001 stopped the precinct mapping. Tancangco, the officer in charge of it, insists she was close to 80-percent finished at that time. She relented when Benipayo and the other commissioners assured her she could restart work on the remaining 20 percent right after the May 2001 congressional-local elections. The project has not resumed to this day, Tancangco says, because Benipayo allegedly has refused to talk about it.

Benipayo also stopped last year the VRIS, for which voter relisting, photographing and fingerprinting should have started. The winning contractor Photokina took the Comelec to court, saying its US partners Unisys, IBM and Polaroid already had spent $2.4 million for the work. Tancangco, Sadain, Javier and Lantion told the judge they’re more than willing to push through with VRIS. Then do so, the judge ordered. Whereupon Benipayo appealed the order before the Supreme Court. "I will implement it only if the High Court orders me to," he reportedly promised the party chiefs last Monday.

Sadain and Tancangco doubt it. Asks Tancangco: "How can we talk of modernization if we can’t even have an en banc to delineate what are operational and financial matters for collegial decision, and what are administrative tasks for the chairman alone to handle?"

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