Finally, Malacañang has come to its senses and announced the appointment of the next chairman of the Commission on Elections in the person of lawyer Andres Bautista.
Two commissioners, Rowena Guanzon and Sheriff Abbas, were also named. The three new election officials will each have a term of seven years; they will serve until February 2022.
Bautista headed the Presidential Commission on Good Government at the time of his appointment and was the dean of the Far Eastern University law school. He was valedictorian of his law school batch and went on to top the bar examination. He has shown himself competent and capable in his various stints in the public and private sectors.
Bautista also does not have any perceived baggage in terms of previous questionable actions or marked incompetence in any of his engagements. It is then hardly surprising that the general consensus on Bautista’s appointment is positive.
The commission needs many things positive these days after dark clouds continue to hover over the 2016 elections. The Supreme Court recently nullified a deal that the poll agency inked for the repair of the 82,000 precinct count optical scan machines. This contract was one of the last acts of Bautista’s immediate predecessor.
The stakes are high in the 2016 elections. The country will elect officials from the president down to the local politicians. As early as now, the posturing and mudslinging have begun and are expected to intensfy in the coming months. The least the government can do is to make the integrity an credibility of the electoral process a given, such that the only thing voters would worry about is how they would make their choices, taking for granted the fact that their votes would be counted accurately.
Bautista’s appointment gives us some hope for this. Let’s ensure he will be able to steer the commission well through this testy period, as he could also navigate the complicated dynamics within the commission without tarnishing the good reputation he now enjoys.