Too late to salvage poll automation?

Sources inside Comelec did it again. They said in Gotcha Wednesday that the 2 p.m. re-bidding that day for 80,000 ultraviolet lamps would be won pre-ordained by one of nine firms that have been cornering Comelec contracts for years. True enough, the poll body awarded the deal to Philand Industries, which bagged multimillion-peso paper supplies in 2008-2009. Delivery was supposed to start the next day; meaning, the imported units that usually take three weeks to arrive were already in RP, waiting for a go-signal. Senatorial candidate, IT expert Joey de Venecia, has been warning that the U/V lamps are unnecessary and pose a risky human intervention in the automated election process.

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The Comelec has been so busy with rackets instead of preparing for the first nationwide automated election that the inevitable happened. Tests of the first 3,000 deployed precinct-count optical scanners flopped. Rival politicians noted that the PCOS wrongly tallied votes for local candidates. The Liberal Party vote-safeguarding team in Luzon said the failure rate was 50 percent. Comelec insiders, quoting Filipino staff of Venezuelan-owned automation supplier Smartmatic, said it was worse.

If the problem is unsolved, automation would crash. And with only five days till Election Day, there might not be enough time to fix the glitch. The election itself could totally fail. The Arroyo admin can exploit an ensuing civil unrest to stay in power. No wonder Malacañang, in a telling gaffe, said Gloria Arroyo will name a new Chief Justice before the May 10 balloting, although vacancy will occur on May 17.

The snafus were varied. In some precincts the PCOS malfunctioned because ink shadings of circles on the front page, for national candidates, bled to the back page, for local candidates. In others the machines read only every other line, counting votes even where there were no shadings.

Comelec and Smartmatic, selling Congress the PCOS “superiority”, had promised last year to use non-bleed ballot paper. Smartmatic yesterday blamed Comelec for Monday’s ballot hitch. The agency, invoking ballot security, made the supplier use thinner paper for the test runs. Comelec admitted as much. IT experts criticized it, saying the use of non-standard ballots instead of real ones was like not conducting tests at all.

Faulty ballot printing further caused cross-eyed PCOS misreading. IT pros from AESWatch and Halalan Marangal earlier had warned Comelec about this. Smartmatic admitted that when it programmed the PCOS, it missed the change in candidates’ listing from vertical to horizontal.

Smartmatic’s solution is to recall 3,000 PCOS units already fielded to precincts or Comelec offices. Along with units still in the warehouse in Laguna, the compact flash cards embedded in each of the 82,200 units will be reprogrammed.

There are two catches. One, reconfiguring the CF cards would expose even the national tallies to fraud. The PCOS could now be made to transmit padded results to canvassing centers on Election Day. Two, there may not be enough time to correct the CF card in each of the PCOS units. Comelec and Smartmatic staff cannot see how they can redeploy 82,200 machines to exactly the right precincts with no single mistake by May 8 or 9, to allow for final field test.

Politicians and IT men are tabling other suggestions. Some propose postponing the election — a dangerous violation of the Constitution. Others want to return to old manual counting — but this would take three months to prepare. Still others are reviving the parallel manual count of selected positions, which the Comelec already had rejected on pretext of chaotic.

Meantime, another complication arises. Most of Smartmatic’s contract commitments with Comelec would end on May 15. Having been paid billions of pesos in advance and allowed to withdraw its performance bond, the alien firm can flee, leaving the country holding the empty bag. In any chaos the Arroyo admin would benefit with a prolonged stay in power.

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Ahon Pinoy party list first nominee Klink Ang dislikes being lumped together with Arroyo fronts in Congress. He says that if Gloria Arroyo wins as congresswoman and runs for Speaker, he will not support her.

Pacyaw party is similarly labeled. Yet second nominee, Pampanga businessman Rey Pineda, was Ninoy Aquino’s personal secretary in Boston and had convinced Noynoy last Oct. to run for President.

Ang Kasangga also will no longer field Marilou Arroyo as nominee. Members have opted instead for founder-entrepreneur Teodorico Haresco. The party started as a foundation that finances micro-enterprises in need: blind masseurs, pedicab drivers, cashew and flower planters, Rizal Park and market vendors, balut and auto parts traders, and senior citizens. It also quietly helps continue the education of 46 children of slain journalists, 12 of whom graduated this year — three from grade and seven from high school, and two from college.

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People just can’t get enough of Willie Nep’s once every six years parody of presidential wannabes. So his hit “Presidentiables Gut Talent” will have one last extended run on Thursday, May 6, 8:30 p.m., at the Music Museum. For tickets or reservations call: Ticket World (02) 8919999; Music Museum (02) 7216726, 7210635.

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“If you want to see God in your brothers, be more aware of the God who dwells in you.” Shafts of Light, Fr. Guido Arguelles, SJ

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