As Nograles goes to SC ; Comelec retreats, pledges ‘zombies’ purge

from The Daily Tribune

Link: http://www.tribune.net.ph/headlines/20100313hed1.html

With the threat of a possible order from the Supreme Court for the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to immediately purge the voters registration list containing double, multiple and dead voters that media have termed as “zombie” voters, following Speaker Prospero Nograles’ filing of a mandamus against the poll body, the Comelec yesterday hastily came up with Resolution 8791, resolving to “abate the other registration records of voters found to have double or multiple registration records as listed by the IT; direct the Board of Election inspectors not to allow these voters to vote in their respective precincts in the May 10, 2010 elections; delete the registration records of the voters in the next Election Registration Board (ERB) hearings; direct the Education and Information Department (EID) of the Commission on Elections to cause the publication of this Resolution in two daily newspapers of general circulation in the Philippines, and give it the widest dissemination; and direct the Election and Barangay Affairs Department in coordination with the ITD to implement this Resolution.

Asked by the Tribune to comment on the latest resolution, which appears to be the poll body’s reaction to his mandamus filed yesterday, Nograles, in a brief telephone interview said he is “giving the Commissioners the benefit of the doubt” in getting the zombie registrants delisted, but that his petition to the high court stays.

Nograles said he still has to get a copy of the Resolution as he was merely briefed on it. He did add, however, that he still has, at this time, some reservations, as apparently, only a watchlist of some 700,000 “zombie” voters in the entire country has been provided by the Comelec, not an outright delisting. Also, the date of the deletion of the registration records of these zombie voters has been stated by Commissioner Rene Sarmiento as being done after the polls will have been conducted.

Per Comelec records, Mero Manila has the highest number of multiple registrants at 156,133, followed by Cavite with 47,016; Davao del Sur, 34,557; Nueva Ecija, 32,030; Rizal province, 28,663; Cebu with 23,602; Laguna with 20,107; Pampanga 21,758; Negros Occidental, 18,800; Iloilo, 15,783; Pangasinan, 14,734; South Cotabato, 14,637; and Batangas, 13,413.

Former president Joseph Estrada, standard bearer of the Puwersa ng Masang Pilipino, for his part, sees an impending election sabotage with glitches in the Comelec’s automated elections and an unstable power supply remaining unresolved.

“Earlier, the National Printing Office (NPO) acknowledged it may not be able to produce the required 50 million ballots for the elections...It is doubted that the NPO can print ‘good and quality ballots in a time space of 54 days. There really should be a contingency plan especially with the Comelec coming up with computerized elections, to safeguard this entire process and for the votes not to wasted,”Estrada said.

For the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG), the announcement by Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal that Comelec “will maintain our course” toward the full automation of the May 10 synchronized elections is not enough assurance.

Prof. Bobby Tuazon, political analyst of the UP-based think tank, said that the Comelec is already two days past its self-decreed deadline to declare whether it is ready for the full automation or to go partial on May 10.

Only 58 days left before the election, Tuazon said, yet the poll body has failed to come up with an official declaration regarding its state of preparedness for the nationwide, automated elections.

“It is with a sense of urgency and criticalness that Comelec should now announce to the people officially whether it will fully automate the coming elections -- or go partial which means, the use of manual system in some areas,” Tuazon said.

Comelec Commissioner Rene Sarmiento assured the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee (JCOC) in a hearing last Dec. 17 that they have set March 10 the deadline for declaring whether to go full automation or manual. Sarmiento said Comelec needed at least two months to prepare for manual election whether full or partial before voting day.

Tuazon said in fact, Feb. 10, 2010 is the deadline set as mandated by the election law.

This announcement is critical because it will set the last phase of finalizing contingency measures for a manual system or partial automation and in making sure that the final preparations, including secure and functioning transmission and power systems, are put in place, Tuazon said.

Without this announcement, he said, both the Comelec, poll watchers, candidates, and the 50 million voters will be in the dark on what will really happen on May 10.

CenPEG has found at least 30 critical areas that will adversely affect the success of poll automation. Some of these are the lack of a source code or software review, password to be generated by Smartmatic and Comelec instead of the BEIs, lack of transparency or public counting, and the absence of adjudication procedures that will process election protests.

CenPEG has also proposed 30 safeguards and security measures corresponding to the identified risks both to Comelec, Congress, and other bodies.

“Even if full automation will push through, millions of voters will doubt the election results in the absence of safeguards against internal rigging and other types of fraud and with powerful fraud machineries still intact,” the CenPEG political analyst said.

The National Citizens Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) also expressed growing concerns about the country’s preparedness for automated elections.

“From the very beginning questions were raised when the contract for the Automated Election System (AES) was awarded to Smartmatic-Total Information Management (TIM).We have seen Comelec extend tremendous leniency to Smartmatic not only in terms of front loadedpayments and fees but accommodating major changes to the contract that sometimes cross the boundaries of what is legal,” the statement said.

It also pointed out other areas of concern, such as the Source Code Review, the safeguard for ensuring the integrity of the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) software that has been breached with the improper or no source code review conducted contrary to the claims of Comelec and Smartmatic.

•Preparation for Random Manual Audit: With the source code review not being conducted properly the last line of defense to assure theintegrity of the AES is the random manual audit as stipulated in Sec.29 of RA 9369.Up to the writing of this report no general instructions have been issued by the Comelec.

•Cleansing of the Voters List:At this stage, sporadic and independent attempts have been conducted to clean up the voters list of multiple and/or spurious registered voters. This is despite a separate budget allocated for the automated voters registration of the Comelec which covered an estimated50 percent of registered voters through the automated finger-print identification system(AFIS).

March 26 is the deadline when the book of voters will be closed and finalized through Comelec’s election registration board (ERB) hearings. As an added deterrent the watchdogs and concerned public should be given access and copies of the certified voters listandthe project of precincts immediately allowing them to pose a challenge to suspected illegalvoters.

It aso said that earlier, elimination of the voter verifiable paper audit trail and the on-screen verification-- two features required in the original request for proposal (RFP) -- was surreptitiously adopted. The PCOS machines capability to process these two features has been disabled. This clearly reflects the bias of Comelec-Smartmatic on speed expediency over transparency and auditability.

On the deployment of PCOS: Namfrel says that with the geography of the Philippines the way it is the capability of the three winning courier firms leaves much to be desired for them to undertake the delivery and deployment task in which none of them have had any experience.

“The Comelec must have guidelines issued to all its election inspectors and watchers as to what steps they should take in case automation does not work in their precincts on election day.

Namfrel chairman Jose Cuisia Jr. said they are no longer pursuing to be accredited by the poll body.

“It is obvious that the Comelec is not interested in Namfrel’s assistance,” he said.

Since the country is holding its first automated polls, the group is no longer interested in conducting quick count but instead will focus in monitoring the poll body and the credibility of the results of the scheduled elections.

With this, Namfrel together with the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines-Nassa has formed Bantay ng Bayan (BnB) which is task to observe the “critical aspects of the election process.”

The BnB reports will be given before and after the elections. On Election Day, May 10, it is set to issue two reports in the morning and in the evening.