PoliticalArena.com

By Christine Avendaño
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:16:00 06/24/2009

MANILA, Philippines—Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile expressed on Tuesday concern over the preparations for the conduct of the automated balloting next year, warning a failure to hold the presidential election could spark a revolution.

During a four-hour Senate hearing, officials of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) were questioned on whether due diligence had been made in selecting the consortium of Smartmatic-Total Information Management Corp. to carry out the computerized polling.

The signing of the P7.4-billion contract has been set for Friday with the Barbados-based company to supply 82,200 counting machines to get results of the polls within two days of voting instead of weeks it takes currently.

The senators also sought a review of the “hubs” where the counting machines will be stored following disclosure that planning for this had been subcontracted by Smartmatic to a forward firm, To Go, owned by the Aboitiz family that is closely identified with the First Family.

“If you don’t have an election in this country, you’re going to have a revolution,” Enrile said. “We have to be very careful and be sure that we can really hold an election with an automated system. Never mind the money, it’s the social explosion that will come that we should be worried about,” he added.

Patented machine breakdown

Politicians and analysts have been casting doubt over the automated process. Many fear chaos due to potential machine breakdown and delays in result transmission, which could lead to a failed election and political limbo.

“The bid to automate the 2010 elections increases the political risk considerably,” Pete Troilo of the consultancy group Pacific Strategies & Assessments told Reuters.

“While elections automation is definitely a step in the right direction and helps limit cheating and fraud, it is not fool-proof and both the public and candidates could lean on irregularities and flaws to contest results.”

Critics fear that allies of President Macapagal-Arroyo could exploit any perceived malfunction in the automation process to invalidate the elections.

Pretext for martial law

“If a popular uprising results, Arroyo could use it as the national security pretext for declaring martial law and subsequently extending her term,” Troilo said.

During the hearing, the senators sought the need to authenticate the papers of Smartmatic after it was found out that it was the Philippine Embassy in Washington and not the Philippine Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, that did the authentication.

Escudero said he got word from Foreign Secretary Franklin Ebdalin that this document should have been authenticated by the Philippine Embassy in Venezuela as it had jurisdiction over Barbados.

Smartmatic spokesperson Cezar Flores said that the company was formed by mostly Venezuelans in Netherlands but it had another company in Barbados, which made the tender and eventually won the poll automation project.

Flores said they had the secretary certificate authenticated by the Philippine Embassy in Washington DC because this was the information they got.

Ferdinand Rafanan, chair of the Comelec Special Bids and Awards Committee, told reporters after the hearing the poll body would only postpone the signing of contract if it would be unable to provide the Senate with a draft copy of the contract before Friday.

Rafanan disagreed on Escudero and Enrile’s desire for the Comelec to make corrections on the authentication papers.

“Why will the consulate general in Washington do the authentication if he did not have any jurisdiction?” Rafanan said. “There is nothing to correct.”

P1.5-billion capital
But it turned out that the Barbados firm had only a capitalization of P1.5 billion, which is less than the P7.4-billion winning bid it made for the project.

“This means they are frying us in our own fat,” Escudero later told reporters. “They are not using their own money. What we pay them that’s what they are going to use for the automation.”
Do homework
Escudero said that Comelec should have done its “homework” and exercised due diligence because it was important to know the people behind Smartmatic.

Comelec officials also got a scolding after senators learned that the plan for the deployment and storage of the 80,000 counting machines to be used on election day was made not by the poll body but by To Go.

The senators were concerned on the choices of “hubs” and “sub hubs” for the deployment of the counting machines by the Aboitiz firm.

For Sen. Richard Gordon, a hub is “a place in a strategic area where one has the capability to transport cargo by air, land sea and has communication capability” and the hubs that were enumerated were “not hubs.”

Both Enrile and Gordon demanded a detailed proposal on the hubs and subhubs.

“Why is it that To Go would be saying how this would be done and why is it not the Comelec which made a study and plan based on experiences from past elections,” Escudero said.

Comelec outsourcing polling
“They’re relying completely on most of the things on the bidder, they’re outsourcing the entire elections essentially and what Comelec would do is just to count the votes on election day but all the rest they’re giving and rolling it out to third parties without any plans coming from the Comelec itself,” Escudero said.

The senators also were concerned about the revelation by Smartmatic that it only bought 51-percent ownership of the Taiwanese company named Jarl Tech, which will manufacture the counting machines, two weeks before it submitted in April its bid to the Comelec.

Senators questioned Comelec officials whether they were able to check out the Taiwanese firm but the latter replied in the negative.

Gordon raised the possibility that the counting machines would fail on election day and Comelec will have to rely on the facility at the nearest precinct.

“We must make sure that the memory card cannot be utilized to reactivate another machine within the same area,” Gordon said. “There could be widespread fraud there.”

Spare machines
The Comelec said it had asked Smartmatic to produce 2,000 spare machines to meet contingencies.

Flores sought to assure senators that the company, which automated elections in other countries like the United States and Peru, had a record of one to two percent margin of error.

“We have never been in a failed election,” Flores said.

Escudero said he did not think the Comelec would be able to automate the polls in time “for the simple reason that they don’t have a plan as of yet and the details were always “to follow.”

“(Comelec officials) have established a time frame, a time line to do things. The way I see it, they’re on time,” Enrile said.

Enrile also was confident of the competence of Smartmatic, noting that the company had participated in several elections that included 21 American states which he stressed were “more than the size of the Philippines.”

With a report from Reuters