AS THE tenuous partnership between Total Information Management (TIM) and the Barbados-based Smartmatic International Corp. collapses, the Commission on Elections under Chair Jose Melo appears to be trying to revive the relationship, using the threat of a law suit to get them to work together. But at this point, it looks like a hopeless endeavor. Although the Comelec is trying to do everything to save the partnership, it may be wiser to let them go their separate ways rather than force them into a marriage of convenience that might unravel when the elections are upon us. The PPCRV is correct in gearing up for a return to manual counting and the Comelec ought to do the same. Let’s go back to manual counting, but prepare for automated elections in the next six years.
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Many reasons are given for the breakup of the joint venture. The Filipino head of TIM allegedly demanded a huge bribe, while the foreign partner has been accused of wanting to control everything, including disbursements of funds and employment of the technology, etc. As in any failing marriage, so many excuses are being given. However, I never liked the idea of a foreign company holding tremendous control over our electoral process. It doesn’t require a genius to see the dangers in such a situation. But even as I argue for manual count for the 2010 elections, let me recall how India, the world’s largest democracy, successfully automated its elections – something we can copy in this country. Indian technologists devised a simple design for the voting machines, which are inexpensive, easy to use (even for illiterate congressmen) and tamper-proof, reducing India’s once-notorious period of counting and proclamation in its once fraud-ridden elections from months to a few days.
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Not too long ago, Cecile Alvarez and I invited Comelec Commissioner Rene Sarmiento to our Sunday 8 p.m. program on dzRH and he related how India resolved 15 years ago to design and make its own voting and counting machines. I thought to myself that this is the answer: we have to devise our own system adapted to conditions in our most backward provinces. At a cost of about $200 per machine, the Indian invention is said to look like a cross between an abacus and an adding machine. One writer described it as a “souped-up adding machine.” It’s battery-operated and portable, the kind we need in our provinces where power can suddenly go out due to Nature’s wrath or man’s machination.
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In May 2004, according to Slate Magazine, India managed to hold an all-electronic election, using more than one million such machines for about 380 million voters. The machines were far from perfect. They were deemed vulnerable to “retail fraud,” but minimized “wholesale fraud” such as what happens in RP. In the 15th general elections in India last April and May, the machines were again used by 58 percent of nearly 700 million eligible voters. About 1,800 out of the one million machines used malfunctioned and the voters in the affected booths had to cast their ballots again. But the recent elections in impoverished India won plaudits even from US observers, and specially from President Obama, for the speed and accuracy of counting, in contrast to the many complaints in the recent US elections.
We in the Philippines should do no less. We don’t need sophisticated Western computers that folks at the grassroots may not even know how to use. We need machines that will work in our setting. And we have six years from 2010 to get to work on them. For starters, let’s get advice from the Indians.
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Still on our elections, it has been over two years since the 2007 election, yet 38 electoral protests still remain unresolved by the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal (HRET). What protesting congressional candidates fear is “baka ma-Cariño,” referring to the case of Noel “Toti” Cariño in Pasig, who won his protest case against Serafin Lanot, but who, in a classic case of miscarriage of justice, only got to sit as duly elected representative of the people of Pasig one day before the final adjournment of the 13th Congress. Among the more celebrated cases now before the HRET are the protests filed by Galan Espino and Generoso Tulagan Jr. against Rachel Arenas in Pangasinan’s 3rd district, the Lacson vs. Sandoval case in Malabon, the Sales vs. Ablan case in Ilocos Norte, the Reyes vs. Dueñas case in Taguig, and the Selma vs. Dilangalen case in what used to be the province of Shariff Kabunsuan.
Under the Constitution, the HRET is the sole judge of all electoral contests in the House, which makes it one of the most powerful committees in the House. But with power goes tremendous responsibility, and it behooves this constitutional body to see to it that the kind of miscarriage of justice Cariño experienced does not ever happen again. The problem is that those currently sitting might in reality have lost in the 2007 elections, but until they are unseated, they enjoy all the perks, including amassing campaign funds for the next election. The time to settle the pending protest cases is now, so that the representatives truly voted by the people will get to sit even just for the remaining year of the 14th Congress. The question we wish to address to the HRET, chaired by Supreme Court Justice Consuelo Ynares Santiago, is, when are these cases going to be resolved with finality? Other members of the HRET are Representatives Mauricio Domogan of Baguio City, Solomon Chungalaw of Ifugao, Justin Chipeco of Laguna, Roberto Cajes of Bohol, Florencio Miraflores of Aklan and Fredenil Castro of Capiz.
