EDITORIAL – Waste of public funds

The deal has been voided and the signatories have either resigned or retired from the Commission on Elections. But Juan de la Cruz continues to bear a heavy burden in connection with the poll automation contract signed by the Comelec with the private consortium Mega Pacific.

Comelec Chairman Jose Melo wants to get rid of nearly 2,000 voting machines that cost taxpayers P1.04 billion. The machines were supposed to be used for the country’s first-ever automated elections in May 2004. But the Supreme Court found the deal irregular and invalidated the contract. The SC recommended the investigation of Comelec officials for possible corruption and prohibited the use of the voting machines. But Mega Pacific, having delivered the machines and received full payment, refused to take back the machines or refund the P1.04 billion.

Benjamin Abalos has since resigned as Comelec chairman — not over the automation deal, but amid allegations that he had dangled a P200-million bribe and brokered the $329-million national broadband network deal signed by Transportation and Communications Secretary Leandro Mendoza with executives of ZTE Corp. in the presence of President Arroyo in China. Like the automation contract, the broadband deal has been scrapped.

With Mega Pacific’s no-return, no exchange policy, the Comelec is stuck with nearly 2,000 white elephants worth P1.04 billion, on top of which taxpayers are shelling out P22 million annually for storage, according to Melo. No one has been sent to prison for this atrocious waste of public funds. Now the government is preparing to spend more in hopes of making the general elections in 2010 fully automated.

Even as the nation pursues poll modernization, there should be no letup in efforts to make those responsible for the Mega Pacific deal account for the waste of over a billion pesos in public funds. At the same time, the new Comelec officials should learn their lessons from the botched deal and see to it that the anomaly will not be repeated in the next attempt at poll automation, which is less than two years away.