EDITORIAL - New man at the Comelec

He intends to “perfect” the automated voting system to eliminate poll fraud, speed up decision-making in the Commission on Elections and confront corruption in the poll body, according to Sixto Brillantes. The election lawyer took his oath yesterday and will formally assume the post of Comelec chairman today after Jose Melo decided to step down two weeks ahead of his original plan.

Brillantes has made the right noises so far, and is expected to be familiar with the job, having focused on election-related litigation in his profession. He faces tough challenges in delivering on those promises. Many people have benefited for years from the manipulation of election results and other forms of undermining the will of the electorate. Corruption has manifested itself in the Comelec not just in big-ticket contracts such as the first automation deal with the Mega Pacific consortium that was aborted but also in smaller projects such as the purchase of security folders for polling centers.

Some Comelec officials and personnel have also become accustomed to receiving grease money in exchange for certain official acts. Such people are expected to resist any effort to change the status quo. Resistance is strongest when livelihoods, especially lucrative ones, are threatened.

If Brillantes can drastically reduce the waiting period for the resolution of election protests, it will be a major accomplishment for the Comelec. Brillantes must also find ways of stopping the abuse of the party-list system, which has installed scions of privileged clans such as Mikey Arroyo as representatives of supposedly marginalized sectors, and distorted the meaning of marginalization.

Brillantes is being urged by some quarters to investigate major poll fraud scandals of the past. If this is asking too much, he can at least see to it that Comelec personnel who have been implicated in cheating are no longer allowed to undermine the integrity of the vote.

Jose Melo bows out today after managing to pull off the country’s first fully automated general elections with minimal glitches. It is now up to Brillantes to fine-tune that system, and to continue the unfinished business of making Philippine elections credible.