Outsmarted

The filing of certificates of candidacy (COCs) that will start in October this year will usher in the official election season in our country. While facing a lot of other pressing concerns, not to mention controversial issues, the on-going preparations for the holding of the national and local elections (NLE) on May 12, 2025 remain on track. Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman George Erwin Garcia guaranteed all systems go for the holding of the NLE taking place along with the first ever parliament elections in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) at the same time next year.

The 2025 NLE will be the first-ever elections that Garcia will handle as the head of the seven-man poll body. The Comelec and Garcia in particular have been fighting off not so obvious last-ditch attempts to derail the adoption of our country’s newest automated election system (AES) in next year’s polls.

The embattled Comelec Chairman could now heave a sigh of relief.

This after the formal indictment on the bribery and money-laundering charges against three top executives of Smartmatic. Three Smartmatic executives along with former Comelec chairman Andres Bautista were indicted last week by a grand jury in Florida in the federal case filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) of the United States. The US-based Smartmatic brought in the precinct count optical scanning (PCOS) machines used by the Comelec in the country’s maiden venture into modern automated polls during the May 2010 presidential elections.

But Smartmatic’s legal troubles with the US federal court started with its renewal of contract in the 2016 presidential elections. Smartmatic allegedly used bribery of certain Comelec officials during the watch of Bautista as Comelec chairman to get the award for the procurement of rebranded vote counting machines (VCMs).

Garcia principally suspected Smartmatic as behind the obvious “fake news” campaign against him after the Comelec disqualified it from the public bidding for the AES to be used for the 2025 NLE. The Comelec barred its former service provider after the US-DOJ initiated investigation into the alleged “rigged bidding,” bribery and money-laundering charges against Smartmatic.

Garcia’s suspicions were validated in the paper trail of his supposed secret bank accounts in the Cayman Islands that turned out to have been opened by one of Smartmatic’s top executives. Complying with the Philippine-US Mutual Legal Assistance Agreement (MLAT), Garcia admitted the Comelec, through our own DOJ and the Department of Foreign Affairs, provided some of the documents requested by the US federal authorities.

Despite these attempts to smear his name and integrity – and the entire Comelec for that matter – Garcia declared that such distractions will neither delay nor derail the holding of the 2025 NLE. In fact, Garcia vowed to the Filipino voters they can look forward to a more credible AES using the Miru System of South Korea as Comelec’s new service provider. Garcia cited the Comelec is deploying 110,00 Miru units that replaced the existing VCMs.

As approved by the Comelec, Garcia promised each city nationwide will have one Miru unit before election day next year. He reiterated this lease contract with Miru was the most advantageous to the government. The Comelec is spared from huge costs of warehousing them after use and gives the poll body a free hand to choose the latest technology available.

Speaking at our Kapihan sa Manila Bay news forum last Wednesday, Garcia reassured the public that the focus and attention of the Comelec have been geared to meet the various deadlines of the poll body’s approved schedule of activities for the conduct of the 2025 NLE. In fact, Garcia just flew back to Manila after he personally supervised the conduct of voters’ registration for members of the former Muslim separatist Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) members and demonstration of the new Miru machine in Sulu last Tuesday.

Garcia, accompanied by newly installed 11th Infantry Alakdan Division and Joint Task Force Orion (JTF-P) chief Brig. Gen. Leonardo Peña, went to the camp of erstwhile MNLF chairman Nur Misuari at the latter’s request last Tuesday as well as the other camp headed by Jikiri. Under the Comelec’s Special Registration Anywhere Program, the Comelec chief went to oversee the registration of former MNLF rebels as new voters in Camp Astana, at Mt. Dragon, Barangay Kagay, Indanan town.

Garcia also led the demonstration of the new Miru AES unit at the Sulu Area Coordinating Center, Sumadja Hall, Capitol Site in Patikul town to showcase its operationalization and ensure its serviceability, assuring all its components are functioning appropriately.

Fresh from his Sulu trip, Garcia told us at the Kapihan sa Manila Bay the next day that the BARMM voters will cast two ballots, but using only one Miru machine specifically programmed to process the results of the NLE and BARMM Parliament elections, Garcia explained.

More modern and programmed by updated technology, the Comelec chief explained, each Miru unit has two buttons to choose which system to use. One button is to enable the machine to be used as direct recording electronic machine. The DRE is an electronic voting system that utilizes an electronic interface that is operated via buttons or touchscreen, to capture and record votes.

The other button allows it to be used as optical mark reader (OMR). The OMR is an electronic voting system and uses an optical scanner to read marked paper ballots and tally the results. Using machine-readable ballots, the names of candidates are printed and next to each name is a symbol, such as a circle that the voter shades. This is what the Comelec used in both the PCOs and VCMs.

Under the Miru contract, the first 20,000 AES units will be delivered by next week. The next 20,000 units will arrive by September; 30,000 units to come in by October; another 30,000 units in October and the last 10,000 units will arrive before year end in December.

With its doomsayers outsmarted, Garcia announced the Comelec will launch across the country a massive information campaign two months before election day.