MANILA, Philippines—The continued failure of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to submit a supplemental budget for poll automation for the 2010 elections has got Senators Richard Gordon and Loren Legarda worried.

Gordon suggested that the intention is probably to have no elections in 2010 as “they’re still thinking of the Con-con and the Con-ass,” referring to suspicions that the administration is pursuing Charter change, either through a constitutional convention (Con-con) or a constituent assembly (Con-ass), to prolong Ms Arroyo’s stay in power.

He dared the President to ask Congress to fund the computerization of the 2010 elections to disprove rumors that she was pursuing Charter change (Cha-cha) so she could extend her term beyond June 30, 2010.

“The ball is in the court of Malacañang to release the budget for automated elections. The more she doesn’t, the more people will think that she is trying to obviate the elections because of Cha-cha ... to extend the term of the President,” said Gordon who authored the amended Automated Elections Law.

The President has included the automation of the electoral process in her 10-point agenda. She has emphasized the need to modernize the country’s archaic voting system, which relies on manual counting, in past State of the Nation Addresses.

Gordon, an independent senator, said it was time for Ms Arroyo to assert her legacy, “she should be the President who brought honest, speedy and reliable elections to the country.”
Victim of circumstances

“I have no personal animosity with the President principally because she works hard. However, I think she has been a victim of circumstances. The takeover of the Palace under very extraneous circumstances ... made her a captive of the political leaders of the country,” he said.

He said “many compromises were made” by the administration to please the ruling elite.

Sen. Loren Legarda said “a computerized election system that cannot guard against poll fraud is next to useless.”

The very essence of employing a computerized poll system was to guard against poll fraud, she said.

“We cannot have a computerized poll system that can count votes, but which cannot determine whether the votes being counted are authentic or fraudulent,” said Legarda.

The Comelec has reduced the proposed budget for poll automation to P13.9-billion after some senators rejected the P21-billion proposed supplemental budget it earlier submitted to the Department of Budget and Management.

Comelec Chair Jose Melo has admitted in a report that the Optical Mark Reader (OMR) technology, which the Comelec is proposing to use in the 2010 national elections, would not be able to flush out double or multiple registrants.

Melo was quoted as saying that the system would need cross-matching machines that could identify voters with double and multiple registrations.

But the supplemental budget it is seeking for the computerization does not include funding for the cross-matching machines.