MANILA, Philippines?The Venezuelan-led consortium handling the Philippines? first total automated elections Wednesday came under a hail of protests ranging from calls for its officials to be arrested to calls for people to take to the streets if elections weren?t held as scheduled on May 10.

Comelec Chair Jose Melo said that while someone would be made to answer for the glitches in the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines, ?that would come later.?

?Of course, you heard Mr. Cesar Flores say Smartmatic takes full responsibility,? Melo said. ?I said, they take full responsibility, but we are the ones who suffer.?

Joseph Estrada, presidential candidate of Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino, said officials of Smartmatic-TIM should be arrested for mishandling the automated election process.

In a phone interview, the former President also said the consortium should return the P7.2-billion fund that was allotted for the automated elections.

Hold order

?There should be a hold-departure order for them,? said Estrada, a plunder convict whose political rights were restored by presidential pardon.

He said the ax should fall on the Comelec and Smartmatic because there was no evidence yet that Malacañang was behind the foul-ups in the automation process.

Tinkering with democracy

From his detention cell, senatorial candidate Ariel Querubin of the Nacionalista Party said the elections should be held as scheduled on May 10.

?Smartmatic has no right to tinker and play with our democracy,? Querubin said.

Postponing the elections was unconstitutional, said the former Marine colonel who led a standoff in 2006 that was linked to attempts to remove President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo from power.

Querubin said that if elections failed or weren?t held as the Constitution provides on May 10, people have the option of taking to the streets.

?If people think that taking to the streets is the best way to assert democracy, so be it,? he said. ?The people will have to make that choice, as a nation.?

Excuse not acceptable

Another Nacionalista senatorial candidate, Gilbert Remulla, said the technical glitches were not acceptable as an excuse.

Remulla said results from tests made in Occidental Mindoro and Muntinlupa City showed that the machines were only counting votes for administration candidate Gilbert Teodoro.

In those tests, Remulla said, votes for Nacionalista standard-bearer Manuel Villar and Liberal Party presidential candidate Benigno Aquino III were not counted when the board of inspectors who supervised the tests found that there were votes for the two candidates.

Software glitch

?That?s not just a software glitch,? said the former TV journalist.

Estrada said he doubted if Smartmatic-TIM could replace compact flash cards in each of the 76,000 PCOS machines on time for the elections on Monday.

He said while he would accept a delay in elections, he won?t accept a prolonged stay in power for Ms Arroyo. ?She should still step down on June 30,? he said.

He said other candidates should support his call to press the Comelec to decide whether elections should be postponed.

Chaotic

?The situation is chaotic,? Estrada said. ?The Comelec should announce now if elections will be postponed so we will not be left hanging in the air.?

He, however, said his schedule would proceed despite what he said was uncertainty over whether the elections would be postponed.

Estrada, however, said he was amenable to postponing the elections to ensure all machines were working and ?install all other safeguards to prevent cheating.?

Postponement no problem

?There?s no problem with postponement if that is the only way to allow the Comelec (Commission on Elections) to remedy the problem,? Estrada said.

Ernesto Maceda, Estrada?s campaign manager, has said Malacañang may yet place its bets on Estrada and support the former president because its supposedly secret candidate, Villar, was falling in the surveys. With a report from Leila Salaverria