MANILA, Philippines?A 30-percent failure rate?

The Commission on Elections is prepared for a manual count of the votes in 30 percent of the ?clustered? precincts in next May?s elections should the automated counting machines fail to work, Comelec Commissioner Armand Velasco told lawmakers Wednesday.

But Parañaque Rep. Roilo Golez immediately saw red, warning that the kind of failure rate that the Comelec was apparently prepared to accept was too big for an automated election.

There should be a limit to how much contingency plans can be accepted without compromising the elections, he said.

A 30-percent failure rate could very well compromise the results, said Golez.

Velasco said the manual count was part of the backup plan in case the automated elections, being held nationwide for the first time, were to hit a snag. (Clustering refers to several numbers of precincts bunched into groups of three to five, each cluster being served by one machine.)

Who decides?

?I?m bothered by this 30-percent contingency plan. It allows for a lot of maneuvering. Who is going to decide on the implementation of the contingency plan? A lot of forces can come in,? Golez said at a congressional oversight committee hearing held at the Senate Wednesday.

Golez raised the specter of ?warlords? in some areas interfering and stopping the use of the machines and ordering a switch to manual counting?a procedure known to be plagued with cheating.

?It?s going to be a compromised manual count. For this automated polls, we should have a very low tolerance level and very low contingency level, beyond which it will be construed as a failure of the system,? Golez said.

Not acceptance, preparation

Ferdinand Rafanan, the head of the Comelec law department, said the poll body prepared for the 30-percent manual count contingency ?for the comfort of everybody.?

?It?s not really because we foresee that there will be manual counting in 30 percent [of the precincts],? he said.

He stressed that the Comelec does not want to revert to a manual count and is just laying down plans to ensure that the country?s first-ever automated election will push through without any glitches.

?That is not acceptance on our part, that?s preparation,? he said.

Quezon Rep. Danilo Suarez, chair of the House oversight committee, raised another worrying issue?the fact that 30 percent of the country is not serviced by the top three cell phone service providers?Sun, Globe and Smart.

The services of the telecommunications firms will be needed to transmit the results from the polling places to the municipalities or cities.

Officials of the Comelec and Smartmatic-TIM, the technology provider for the automated polls, assured lawmakers that in areas where telecommunications firms have no signal, they would use satellite devices to be provided by Smartmatic.

These devices would entail no extra cost since Smartmatic is required to provide for these under the terms of the contract.

As far as the Comelec is concerned, the May 10 elections will be automated as planned, Comelec Chair Jose Melo told the same congressional hearing.

Melo said the poll body was able to give this assurance, having hurdled a ?critical period? that showed the vote-counting machines to be operational and effective.

The critical period is supposed to cover the laboratory and field test of the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines, which Melo declared to be ?successful.?

Another cause for the Comelec?s confidence is that it expects all of the PCOS machines to be delivered by Feb. 21, a week ahead of the Feb. 28 deadline set in the contract, said Melo.

?I?m very confident that we will be able to automate because almost all the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines are already here. The batteries are already here and so are the laptops and marking tests. Everything, except for the balance of the PCOS machines,? Melo told reporters.

He said there was a very slim chance that the Comelec will have to revert to manual elections.

There will be a resort to manual polls only ?if there is a breakdown of the counting machines or a delay in the delivery of the machines,? he said.

However, legislators and nongovernmental organizations remained skeptical that the Comelec would be able to pull off the first automated elections in the country, raising questions over the ongoing preparations.

Sen. Francis Escudero, who chairs the Senate panel of the oversight committee, doubted that Smartmatic-TIM can meet the scheduled delivery of the machines, and said the country should prepare for the possibility that ?we cannot go on full automation.?

Alfredo Pascual, convenor of the AES Watch, urged the Comelec to state ?as early as now? whether manual voting will be conducted ?to stop all speculations.?

?Let?s be realistic as early as possible and determine the feasibility for areas that would go manual,? Pascual said.

55,000 machines delivered

Melo told the hearing that more than 55,000 of the 82,800 PCOS machines to be used for 76,000 clustered precincts have been delivered or are in the process of being delivered.

These include the 28,900 machines already in the Comelec warehouse in Cabuyao, Laguna; the 12,000 waiting to be released from the Bureau of Customs; the 8,000 in transit from Shanghai, China; and the 7,200 now waiting to be shipped to the Philippines, he said.

Melo said that Smartmatic-TIM still has to deliver 36,100 machines but that the company would be able to bring them all in by Feb. 21.

Deliveries? sched readjusted

Smartmatic spokesperson Celso Flores assured the oversight committee that ?we can meet the deadline? for the delivery of the machines.

Escudero noted that the poll body and Smartmatic had already readjusted the schedule of the deliveries.

Comelec Executive Director Jose Tolentino explained that there was a two-month delay in the signing of the contract?which was signed in July instead of May?because of problems between the winning bidder and its partner.

He said the schedule also had to be readjusted because of a case filed against the winning bidder.

Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman asked Melo how the Comelec?s schedule would be affected if the balance of the 82,800 machines to be delivered would not arrive by Feb. 21.

?In that event, there will be areas in the country that will have no PCOS machines and the elections there will be conducted manually,? Melo replied.

Melo told the hearing the Comelec was able to hurdle the ?critical phases? in the implementation of the automated election project.

This included the laboratory testing of 72 PCOS machines in its Cabuyao plant from Jan. 21 to 25 which Melo said was ?successful.?

He said the other critical phase, the field-testing of the machines, also proved successful.

He read a text message from Comelec personnel that came in during the hearing that said the field-testing of the machines in Naga, Cebu and Bacood in Benguet were all ?successful.?

?We?re still waiting for the results of the field-testing in Lake Sebu in South Cotabato,? Melo said.

The Comelec chief later told reporters that ?even if it was not necessary? the poll body will conduct another field-testing of the machines to accommodate nongovernment organizations as suggested by Escudero and Makati Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr., head of the House panel in the committee.

Source code

Having hurdled the field tests, the Comelec is now awaiting the arrival on Jan. 31 of officials of SysTest Labs, the US company that will review and certify the source code of the automated system.

The Comelec will sit with representatives of the political parties on Feb. 2 to ?discuss the parameters and the ground rules on how they can review the source code,? Melo said.

?Once the technical evaluation group certifies this, it?s a go for us. That?s the last day for deciding, Feb. 9 or 10,? Melo said.

But the election watchdog groups told the hearing Wednesday that they would not be relying on the certification to be made by SysTest but would want to do their own review of the source code which they said could take from two to four months.

?The elections would have concluded by then,? Melo told reporters.

?I think that would cause a little problem but we will try to thresh it out,? he said.