MANILA, Philippines—It pays to be cool.

After insisting that it would not settle for anything less than a fully automated 2010 elections, Malacañang was inexplicably calm on Tuesday in the face of the strong possibility that balloting would be conducted manually.

Press Secretary Cerge Remonde said the Palace would not even call for an investigation into why Total Information Management Corp. (TIM), the local partner in the consortium that won the Commission on Elections (Comelec) bidding for the project, had pulled out of its contract with Smartmatic International.

“If we do that, we would be infringing into the prerogative of an independent constitutional commission,” he said.

Remonde said the Palace would just appeal to the two companies’ “sense of patriotism and social concern.”

He reiterated that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo—who is besieged with rumors that she would run for a congressional seat to eventually become prime minister under a parliamentary government—was “really for full automation.”

“While there’s life, there’s hope,” Remonde said. “We are not losing hope.”

Asked why Malacañang didn’t seem bothered by the TIM’s surprising pullout, he said: “It always pays to be cool and that is the responsible thing to do.”

Senators Richard Gordon, Loren Legarda, Francis Pangilinan, Pia Cayetano and Aquilino Pimentel Jr., asked the Comelec to salvage the situation.

“I call it estafa against the country. They’re holding hostage the country,” Gordon said, adding he would convene the blue ribbon committee to look into the controversy.

Comelec options proposed

In a bid to continue with poll automation, Gordon called on the Comelec to:

*Disqualify Smartmatic-TIM and undertake and reconsider the submission of the other bidders under the post-qualification procedure to get the next lowest calculated bid until an award is made.

*Resort to limited source bidding where Comelec could invite a set of preselected suppliers of consultants with known experience and proven capability to supply an automated elections system to bid for the contract.

*Adjust its terms of reference to perhaps allow 100 percent foreign suppliers, manufacturers and/or distributors to join the bidding, as the goods sought to be procured are not available from local sources.

‘Be creative’

Pangilinan urged the Comelec to “be creative, think out of the box and salvage the situation.”

“Our country, our children do not deserve the mediocrity, the mess and the inutility being here displayed by government in this botched deal,” he said.

Saying the pullout of TIM was a “bad development,” Pimentel expressed certainty that Comelec “will look for a way to save the situation.”

“Otherwise, there will be a renewal of the machinery for massive cheating,” he said.

Cayetano agreed, saying that the “dreaded Garcis” of manual election fraud will make a return come the 2010 polls.

Muntinlupa Rep. Rufino Biazon urged the government to penalize TIM for sabotaging the elections. “They should not simply get away with this without suffering the consequences.”

Consortium liable

Justice Secretary Agnes Devanadera said that government could sue for damages.

“If the consortium is not able to deliver, it’s the consortium that will be made liable and the backing out of the Filipino partner cannot be made an excuse,” Devanadera said.

Former Comelec Chair Christian Monsod said that the poll body had no one to blame but itself for the looming crisis. He shrugged off fears that manual balloting would result in cheating.

“Cheating is mainly a Comelec management problem and any cheating that occurs is Comelec’s responsibility,” he said.

Monsod said that aside from going back to manual counting of votes, the Comelec may still continue with automation under two options.

One, he said, is a scaled-down automation under Republic Act No. 9369, which gives Comelec the authority to first test the system it selected in at least two highly urbanized cities and two provinces each in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.

Open election system

Another option, Monsod said, is the Open Election System (OES) being pushed by the poll watchdogs, the Catholic Church and other political parties.

The OES combines the current manual process of voting using the traditional ballot and the tallying of votes at the precinct level, with an automated, near instantaneous, canvassing of results at the city/municipal, provincial and national levels, as prescribed by law.

The OES, Monsod said, seeks to shorten the canvassing period for national candidates from the usual 30 to 40 days to as short as five days.

“The OES can be done with ordinary computers with simple software that can be developed locally,” Monsod said, adding that the system would cost the government up to P4 billion only.
The preparations, he said, can start as late as November and be ready by May.

MegaPacific machines

Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay, president of the United Opposition, said: “Regardless of the system used, we should guard against fraud, especially wholesale fraud done with the connivance of some corrupt Comelec personnel.”

Vice President Noli de Castro also urged the Comelec to push through with full or partial automation.

“The credibility of the national elections is an absolute necessity to attain political stability,” De Castro said in a statement.

Former Surigao del Sur Rep. Prospero Pichay said the Comelec could always use the 1,991 MegaPacific counting machines mothballed by the Supreme Court prior to the 2004 vote following defects in the P1.2-billion contract with the Comelec.