Congratulating the Comelec for the conduct of the last election on May 14, 2007 is premature and uncalled for. There is nothing to be proud of in the manner the election was held. Contrary to Comelec’s self serving assessment, the last election is definitely no better than the previous ones. Perhaps the reason for lack of any marked improvement in our elections is the clichéd claim of our electoral body after every voting, that it is “generally peaceful, orderly, clean and honest”. Expressing self-satisfaction on its own performance closes the door to any room for improvement. It is the greatest obstacle to the factual ascertainment of the real happenings that keep on recurring. This “puede na” attitude is the very reason why past mistakes have never been corrected.
The Comelec should not be satisfied with the “general” outcome. It should earnestly look into the specifics and verify the details of various irregularities no matter how insignificant or isolated they are. To be sure, the incidents in the last election are not insignificant and isolated. It may not be Comelec’s sole responsibility to prevent election related violence and killings happening every election time as they are more of police and military concerns. But certainly, it has the biggest share of the blame for the death of a public school teacher serving as chairman of the Board of Election Inspector in Taysan, Batangas. This is the second time that a teacher had died guarding ballot boxes in Batangas. After the first incident, Comelec should have taken concrete steps to assure the safety of its inspectors by securing every polling place. The recurrence of another death in the same province is almost criminal negligence.
As in the past elections, ballot boxes have been snatched and destroyed, attempts at ballot box switching were made, official election forms have been stolen, elections were not held in several municipalities for lack of election materials, and a number of voters have been disenfranchised. These hitches may not be as widespread as to affect the general outcome of the election or its overall picture as being “honest, clean and orderly”. Nevertheless these are indelible stains that also tarnish the credibility of the entire process and raise doubt on whether they are really isolated. Besides, they may also have a great bearing on the outcome of the elections in the local government units where they occurred. Hence the Comelec must still address the problem. And it cannot do so by “praise releases” and self-congratulations on the “general” conduct of the elections. The problems on the ground cannot be solved in the newspapers or TV and radio.
The Comelec actually has three years in between elections to prevent the recurrence of these hitches, but up to now they still occur precisely because of this puede na attitude. Hopefully Comelec by this time has learned its lessons well and will discard this kind of attitude so that by 2010 these hitches will be things of the past even if by that time we are still using the obsolete method of manual voting, counting and canvassing.
The better solution is still to renew the implementation of Republic Act 8436 authorizing the use of an automated election system (AES) for the process of voting, counting of votes and canvassing/consolidating the results of the national and local elections. Indeed Comelec had already drawn up plans for such implementation by computerizing the system of registration and validation of voters as well as the voting and the counting of votes and by the electronic transmission of the results. After a series of rebuffs in the Supreme Court (ITF vs. Comelec and Mega Pacific, G.R. 159139, January 13, 2004; Brillantes vs. Comelec, G.R. 163193, June 15, 2004), the Comelec must have learned enough lessons already to avoid repetition of the same mistakes. The lessons learned may indeed be quite expensive as the counting machines and the electronic devices subject of the contracts declared null and void amount to more than a billion pesos. But if modernization of the electoral process will result in a fraud free, orderly and truly clean and honest elections, then let’s charge everything to experience without prejudice of course to indicting the officials involved in the fraudulent transactions.
The possibility of achieving a real, honest to goodness modernization by 2010 will be greatly enhanced if our Comelec Commissioners would be graceful and patriotic enough to allow a revamp of the Commission itself by tendering their resignations even if their terms have not yet expired. Admittedly some Commissioners recently appointed are not tainted with the past anomalies and are reputedly competent people of proven integrity and probity, so they can very well be re-appointed in the proposed revamp. The idea here is really to remove the nagging credibility problem of the electoral body. Unless this is done, modernizing our elections may still be ineffective in eliminating the many hitches we are experiencing now in our electoral process.
To be sure modernization or automation of our elections is not 100% fraud proof or fool proof. While human intervention is greatly minimized, there is still a possibility that the results can be manipulated if the automation is not properly carried out. Indeed it requires highly technical skills so that all possible loopholes that may sabotage the operation will be plugged. Hence, aside from lawyers, technical people with background and experience in computerization should be appointed commissioners. Or the idea of privatizing certain aspects of operation may be studied with proper control and supervision so as to maintain the system of checks and balances.
Therefore, as soon as the dusts of the last electoral battle have settled, preparations for the 2010 elections should start based on lessons of the past. Time is running out. Our country can not further afford to have the kind of elections we have been conducting so far under an electoral body with a greatly damaged credibility.
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