Talk about leaving a legacy upon retirement.
Former Commission on Elections Chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr. certainly left a problem at the agency. Shortly before he stepped down, Brillantes led the commission in approving a P268.8-million deal with Smartmatic for the refurbishment of the 80,000 precinct count optical scan machines it had first acquired from the same company for use in the 2010 elections.
The PCOS machines are supposed to be repaired and upgraded in time for the May 2016 national polls.
The Supreme Court however shot down the deal as contained in Comelec Resolution 9922 and the Extended Warranty Contract Program 1, because the poll agency failed to justify its resort to direct contracting.
Petitioners of the case argued that the Comelec committed grave abuse of discretion in approving the deal, which was anomalous and scandalous. They also said the poll body seemed to be rushing to tap Smartmatic for the contract.
The Comelec now is entertaining several options on how to prepare for the elections given the Supreme Court’s decision. It could bid out the refurbishment of the 82,000 – it says there is still time because the process is supposed to last only five months.
Another option is to use new machines altogether – 23,000 of them – which are now still in the bidding process. Under this set-up, though, many precincts would share a single machine. The Comelec spokesman has said this would slow down the counting Yet another scheme would entail transporting ballots from a group of precincts to a designated voting center. A manual scenario would be when voting is manual with automated transmission of votes. An extreme scenario is having no elections at all, which some doomsayers have mentioned to spook the people.
The poll body assures us it has enough time to put in place any of these alternatives, just as soon as it obtains the final decision of the Supreme Court. This is reassuring for now, given that we have little over the year before citizens troop to the polling centers again. We will see, in the next few months, whether Comelec can be as confident as it sounds.
It is easy to get swept up into the election frenzy, which is expected to intensify as October, the deadline for the filing of certificates of candidacy, nears. There is bound to be another circus as the campaign season begins.
Through all this, we should remember that more fundamental than who will get elected is how they will win, or lose. With equal interest and intensity as we watch the national and local races, let us ensure that the manner in which votes are cast, counted and canvassed will truly reflect the people’s will.