Lagman appointment a boost to Comelec automation, says Brilliantes

MANILA, Philippines—While the appointment of IT expert Augusto “Gus” Lagman will be a boost to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) automation program, Chairman Sixto Brillantes said it could affect the Comelec’s disposition of legal cases.

“Gus Lagman is more of an IT expert. He will be a big asset in the automation of elections however, it could weaken our disposition of legal cases,” Brillantes said over Radyo Inquirer’s Tapatan with Jay Sonza and Den Macaranas.

“But he is hiring his own legal consultant,” Brillantes said.

Currently, Brillantes said they are preparing for the August Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) elections.

The House of Representatives already has a bill seeking the postponement of  the ARMM polls, but the Senate has yet to act on it.

“We are already pressed for time because the election is on Aug. 8,” Brillantes said.

Brillantes said they have moved the filing of candidacy from May 9 to 19 to May 14 to 18 and finally from May 19 to 23.

“We expect that on or before May 19 we will have a feedback from the Senate whether [the election] is going to be postponed or not,” Brillantes added.

President Benigno Aquino III appointed Lagman as Comelec Commissioner, replacing Nicodemo Ferrer whose term ended in February.

The IT expert who was nominated to the post by the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections, told  the media last week that President Aquino had never talked to him about the position, and that he only learned about his appointment from “some people from Malacanang.”

The outspoken Lagman had been a staunch critic of the technology chosen by the Comelec in implementing the automated polls last May 2010, as he feared then that that it could lead to “wholesale cheating.” Instead, he pushed for the adoption of the Open Election System (OES), noting that while it was “not cheat-proof,”  the system at least made cheating “detectable.”

He had also scored the poll body’s lack of transparency. “The source code should have been made transparent,” he repeatedly said in interviews and public forums.

He also criticized the botched deal between the Comelec and Mega Pacific, the company that won the contract to modernize the 2004 elections.

Lagman is a convenor of the Movement for Good Governance, lead convenor of TransparentElections.org.ph, former president of Information Technology Foundation of the Philippines (ITFP) and the Philippine Computer Society (CSP), and former Technology Chief of the National Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel).

He chairs Vinta Systems, Inc., a developer of artificial intelligence-oriented software products, and is a director of STI College in Recto and Biometrix Technologies, Inc.