THE Commission on Elections may run out of time to print ballots for next year’s election if they will wait until after they resolve the disqualification cases against presidential aspirants Senator Grace Poe and Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, a former official said Saturday.
“They are running out of time… There’s only a little time left to resolve it,” former Comelec commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal said after the Comelec gave Poe and Duterte until Dec. 28 to comment on the disqualification cases filed against them.
“The chairman [Andres Bautista] said the final list of candidate will be on Dec. 23, but [Poe and Duterte] were given 10 days, or until Dec. 28, to submit their memorandums,” Larrazabal said.
“It’s going to be tight, unless they have a decision within the week after [Dec. 28]. It can still be done, but it’s gonna be very tight,” Larrazabal said in an interview.
Larrazabal assessed the poll body’s schedule after Bautista said they will postpone the official list of candidates from Dec. 15 to Dec. 23 due to the pending decision of the commission en banc on the two motion of reconsiderations of Poe and Duterte.
But Larrazabal said the Comelec needs enough time to configure the ballot and present it to the public before they print the official ballot.
“You have to configure the ballot faces. When you configure the ballot faces, you have to submit it to the public for them to check if it is correct. So you give them a week, then it goes back to you then you get it, so from Jan. 8 to Jan. 26. It’s about 18 days, that’s really tight,” he said.
The former poll commissioner advised the Comelec to start sacrificing their weekends and holidays to prepare for the elections on May 9, 2016.
Larrazabal recalled that when the Comelec held the first automated elections in 2010, all Comelec officials and employees worked every day until the election day itself.
“Well, what is important is they can make adjustments if they cannot meet the timeline. You just have to adjust and compensate because we are running out of time,” Larrazabal said.
He also challenged Bautista to drop the idea of not automating the 2016 elections because the two Comelec chairmen before Bautista were able to implement what the election law requires despite the difficulties they encountered.
“I think he (Bautista) needs to focus. May 9 is the date set for the elections. You can’t move that because people will not allow that to be moved,” he said.
“This is the third automated election in the Philippines. We did it in 2010. That was the presidential elections. In 2013 it was also done, there is now no reason for it not to be done again in 2016,” Larrazabal said.