BAGUIO CITY?Presidential aspirant, Sen. Richard Gordon, said he remained optimistic that poll automation would proceed as scheduled because ?it is the solution to a big wall of money? that characterizes the May 2010 elections.

Gordon said he has not joined the public debate surrounding the delay in the delivery of the 82,200 ballot scanners, also called precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines.

He said he expected Smartmatic-TIM, the winning consortium of the poll automated machines, to deliver half of the machines on Dec. 28, and in the middle of January.

?When I do comment, then delikado na talaga tayo (we are already in peril),? he said at a news briefing here on Wednesday.

He said automation removes all other advantages available to a well-financed political campaign because ?the ability to determine the winners (within an hour for local polls or by the end of the day for national elections) meant removing the bureaucratic layers like poll watching which could be corrupted.?

He said he pursued the presidency knowing that three of his rivals have already spent P698 million on television commercials even before the start of the official campaign period in February.

He said he had spent only P17 million in campaign commercials, which were ?designed to be more informative than advertisements featuring candidates riding bicycles.?

Gordon said his rivals could have spent up to P2 billion each by yearend that would give them an advantage overlooked by the judiciary.

He referred to the Supreme Court?s November ruling that a political aspirant only becomes an official candidate when the campaign period starts.

Gordon called his team-up with former Metro Manila Development Authority Chair Bayani Fernando as the ?bonding of nontraditional problem solvers.?

This was perhaps why they ended up singing different yet brilliantly unorthodox tunes.

Gordon said corruption is the principal problem of Filipinos today that he intends to solve should he win the presidency.

But Fernando said what needed to be addressed is bad government engineering because money lost from graft still ends up helping the economy.

?It is not corruption that is making us poorer [due to misused taxes] ? [it is] failed engineering. [During my stint as public works secretary, I learned that] 60 percent of government money was spent on [badly designed] infrastructure,? said Bayani, a civil engineer and former Marikina mayor.

Money misspent on government infrastructure that is quickly destroyed becomes ?rubble,? and is of no use to anyone, while money stolen by corrupt officials is reinvested in personal ventures that eventually help the economy, he said.

Gordon and Fernando attended the birthday celebration of faith healer Ramon Labo Jr., who is running for Baguio mayor.

A former Olongapo City mayor, Gordon said he, like Fernando, had pursued unorthodox solutions to problems plaguing their cities.

He said the closure of the Subic naval base in Zambales would have destroyed Olongapo had the people not solved their problems using new ideas.

He said he could pursue new solutions for the country like a ?debt-for-honesty-swap deal,? which he could negotiate with developed nations. This could reduce or wipe out debts each time the country is able to reduce government corruption, he said. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon