MANILA, Philippines – Election officials will end up in jail if they fail to either automate or prepare for the manual balloting next year, Senate President Juan Ponce-Enrile warned on Friday.

Enrile said the Commission on Elections should make public its declaration on whether it could automate the 2010 elections, saying the issue should not be left hanging.

“There needs to be a deadline. The automation can’t be open-ended. Comelec should say whether they can do it because if they can’t do it, then they can’t… Otherwise, they will all go to jail,” Enrile said in Filipino at a press conference in the Senate.

“The poll body is the one responsible. They claim that they can automate in a short time and then they can’t and they are not prepared for manual polls. They have to prepare for the manual election as back up while getting ready for automation. It’s back up for the whole exercise,” he said.

At this point, he said, there was no stopping the poll automation “if it can be done.”

But in case this did not push through, Enrile said the Comelec should be prepared to shift to manual balloting.

“We can’t afford not to have an election. I will keep repeating, we can’t afford it. This country will be more than worse than a banana republic if we don’t have an election,” he pointed out.

“It’s better to have a manual election than nothing. Whatever may be the opinion of others, I’d rather have a manual election compared to no elections or failure of election or a revolution because that will be the net result if we have no election,” he further said.

Enrile said the P11.3 billion poll automation budget could be used for manual balloting even without violating the law.

He also saw nothing wrong with the Comelec awarding the project to Smartmatic Inc. even without a local partner since he said the 60-40 share ownership should only apply to public service or a public utility operation.

“I’m not familiar with the law on procurement because I was not here when the law was passed and I don’t know why they will require a Filipino partner for the winning bidder because this activity that we’re discussing, election, hindi naman public service. It’s not a public utility operation, which requires the 60-40 ratio of share ownership of the winning bidder,” he further said.