Dear Atty. Josie Lichauco,
It is a great pleasure to be once more working with you in this our common objective, indeed a rare opportunity, to contribute to our country’s “democratic aspiration” in this “recent phase of human history”.
As known to most in the Information Communication Technology (ICT) industry, the undersigned had been designated in February 2007 to represent the ICT industry in the COMELEC Automaton Advisory Council (CAC) upon the recommendations of the Philippine Electronic Telecommunications Federation (PETEF) and the former Information Technology Foundation of the Philippines (ITFP). Other members in the CAC are Ambassador Henrietta T. De Villa, Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), representatives from the Philippine Computer Society (PCS), the Chief Information Offices (CIO) Forum, the University of the Philippines Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering, the Consortium for Electrical Reform (CER), the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), the Department of Education (DepEd) and Secretary Ray Anthony Roxas-Chualli, Commission on Information Communication Election System (AES), Republic Act No. 9369, signed on February 2007.
Please note that RA9369 is the “legislative act”, which amended the Omnibus Election Code. It contains specific provisions on the conduct of automated elections including the creation of the CAC, a Technical Evaluation Committee (TEC) chaired by the representative from the DOST, a Project Management Steering Committee, the certification by the TEC not later than 3 months before the date of the electoral exercise of the AES including its hardware and software components to be implemented and the source code audit and review through an established international certification entity to be chosen from the recommendations of the CAC, opening of source code to interested political parties or groups once the AES technology is selected for implementation, the random manual audit, printing of 30 copies of the election returns (ER), the electronic transmission of ERs from the precinct to the municipality simultaneously to the COMELEC national server and the media/electoral watchdog server, among others. The Constitution and the enabling election laws as amended has granted the COMELEC the authority and responsibility to issue administrative issuances, the General Instructions, and various Resolutions on the conduct of automated elections through the Commission En Banc such as the appreciation of ballots under the AES, the administration and control of unique private and public keys for each of the machines, rules for election protests under the electronic system of voting and canvassing, et. al.
COMELEC had conducted several exercises for poll automation since 1997, the most recent of which was the successful automation of the ARMM election in 2008 which formed the basis for the Resolution by the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee (JCOC), exhorting COMELEC to proceed with full automation in 2010. There will be six additional tests of the System starting in November: two field tests on the customized software based on the Philippine Election System, Mock Elections 2@ in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, the TEC Certification tests and the Final End to End System Test at the precinct level 3-7 days before election day.
Smartmatic TIM has undergone through a comprehensive and transparent bidding, evaluation and award process, which was recorded 7x24 in videos kept by the Law Department and opened to all bidders including media. All documents and certifications submitted were further subjected to verification and past qualification.
Payment is based on progress billing, typically found to total systems projects, in the private sector and government, such as the Light Rail Transit and the regional telecommunications projects for infrastructure and in large IT projects.
Last week COMELEC Chairman Jose A. K. Melo announced that the Commission will print manual election returns (ER) equivalent to 30% of the number of precincts. This was in line with the suggestion of JCOC to include in its contingency plans (as ultimate resort) the manual counting of the shaded ballots in localities where there may be breakdown of machines and no available spares or replacements, power/transmission failures with no access from the nearest precinct or municipality.
There is absolutely no “scaling down” or “reduced coverage” of the automated elections. Failure of elections is defined by law, possible only at the barangay level. Failure of machines is not a failure of election.
Thank you in advance for granting us the favor to have equal space to address these issues by publishing this rejoinder to your article last 28 Sept. 2009. — RENATO B. GARCIA, ICT Consultant, Office of the Chairman, Commission on Elections, President, PETEF Foundation, Lecturer, Strategic Management, Ateneo JG School of Management