MANILA, Philippines?What?s bad for business is bad for the country.

Fearing a possible failure of the automated elections on May 10, influential business groups on Wednesday joined a growing clamor for the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to adopt a parallel backup manual count.

In a briefing, officials of the Makati Business Club (MBC) and the Management Association of the Philippines (MAP) said that the manual count should be done as a contingency measure for at least the contests for president, vice president and mayors.

This has been proposed by a group of IT professionals, as well as various poll watchdog organizations and political parties.

The MBC and MAP officials gave the Comelec until April 23 to accept what they called was a ?band-aid solution.?

Should Comelec ignore the business groups? suggestions, MBC president Alberto Lim said: ?This is not our last card. We have other cards to play.? He did not give details.

Lim said the Comelec could allocate some P500 million for the backup plan, including provisions for laptops and projectors, as well as the costs that may be incurred should the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines conk out.

Lim and MAP chair Baltazar Endriga said that should there be a discrepancy in at least 1 percent of the votes per machine, the Comelec must do a recount of all the votes covered by that particular machine.

?It is so unreasonable for Comelec not to accept this because it doesn?t cost much,? Lim said.

He said that the Comelec had an P11.3-billion budget for automation and another P10 billion for the conduct of the elections. He estimated that some P4 billion remained from the allocations for the manual count.

Not in automation law

Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez said that the automation election law did not allow a parallel manual count.

?It?s not included in the law,? he said.

Election Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal said the poll body was willing to meet with the MBC and other groups to discuss their concerns.

Critics say that the manual count is allowed under Section 13 of the Automation Code (Republic Act No. 9369).

It says that the automated election system ?shall be so designed to include a continuity plan in case of a systems breakdown or any such eventuality which shall result in the delay, obstruction or nonperformance of the electoral process.?

Failure not an option

Lim stressed that a failure of elections was not an option, hinting that this could lead to another people power revolution.

Endriga said that the MAP supported the practical, easy-to-implement method recommended by respected information technology professionals in a news briefing on Tuesday to eliminate fraud and ensure that the balloting reflected the will of the people.

?We trust that the Comelec?s immediate adoption of this backup system will mitigate, if not eliminate, the skepticism of many about the credibility of the automated election system and the results that it will deliver,? said an MAP statement released to reporters.

Fear-mongering

?There is indeed no turning back on the automated elections. Failure of elections is not an option. A scenario of a failure of elections is not good for the national psyche and particularly bad for business when extraordinary efforts are needed to stimulate the economy,? it said.

Even so, Jimenez slammed critics of the automated polls.

?The Comelec doesn?t take threats lightly. Do the country a favor and stop scaring the living daylights out of anyone,? Jimenez said in a press conference.

?A deliberate, concerted and continuous attempt to undermine the credibility of an election is an election offense,? he said, adding that the penalty is one to six years imprisonment.

?If they think they have reason to believe that the elections will be a failure or rigged, they should present evidence to us instead of fear-mongering,? Jimenez said.

?We really can?t see where these fears are coming from except from the desire to totally scuttle automation. Automation will proceed. It will be a 100 percent, there?s no 30 percent list that it will not be automated.?

Where will hiccups happen?

In Cebu City, Liberal Party (LP) standard-bearer Sen. Benigno ?Noynoy? Aquino urged the Comelec to disclose as soon as possible the areas where glitches would require a manual counting of votes so that the LP could prepare accordingly.

?If they will tell us two days before elections that doesn?t make for a level playing field. We want to impress upon our voting population and the citizenry in general they have to exercise some modicum of pressure on Comelec to do that which is right by all of us,? he said.

Former President Joseph Estrada?s Puwersa ng Masang Pilipino (PMP) said that the Comelec should print manual tally ballots for the whole country instead of doing so just for 30 percent of the electorate as a contingency should the counting machines fail.

Print enough for manual ballots

?Where would they bring manual ballots meant for 30 percent of the electorate when they still do not know in which places the voting machines would fail?? said Jose de Venecia III, a PMP senatorial candidate and the party?s spokesperson for IT issues.

?There is no way they can realistically deploy these manual ballots throughout the entire country to cover expected voting glitches from Aparri to Jolo, within the time-frame set for voting. The only answer is to print enough manual tally ballots for the entire electorate,? De Venecia said. With reports from Philip C. Tubeza, Norman Bordadora and Eliza Victoria, Inquirer Research