'New president known 2 days after polls'

MANILA, Philippines – The successor of President Arroyo will be known in just two days with the full automation of the May 10, 2010 elections, winning bidder Smartmatic-Total Information Management Corp. (TIM) assured the public yesterday.

“The current manual system takes several weeks to produce results... But with full automated polls, within one or two days, we will have the results for all the positions nationwide,” said Smartmatic sales director Cesar Flores.

Smartmatic-TIM was given the “notice of award’ by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) yesterday, formally announcing it as the winner of the lease contract to supply the 82,000 precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines that will be installed in every precinct across the country.

The contract still has to be prepared by the Comelec in consultation with various stakeholders but it will amount to P7.2 billion, the bid offer of Smartmatic-TIM.

The Comelec has directed the consortium to post a performance security bond of P360 million that is equivalent to five percent of the contract price.

“We are honored, humbled and happy to have been awarded this very important contract that is important to the lives of the Filipinos, important to the development of democracy in the Philippines,” he noted.

Flores claimed that while election results would be known faster, the automation technology would still observe the “levels of transmission” mandated under the country’s election laws.

This means that as in the manual polls, the automated elections will still maintain the transmission of election returns from the polling precincts to the municipal canvassing centers, to the provincial canvassing centers and to the Comelec central for national positions.

‘Comfortable with Comelec’s timetable’

According to Flores, they are “comfortable” with the Comelec’s timetable for next year’s polls.

“We are comfortable with the time that we have left to prepare. From now to May 2010, we believe we have a comfortable schedule. We’ll be submitting all the machines according to schedule,” he added.

Smartmatic chief executive officer Antonio Mugica stressed that their machines are tamper-proof.

“The system that we have was designed not to be tampered with. So even if we want to, we cannot tamper with our own system... Even if anybody wants to tamper it, if anyone really has the ability, it would really be impossible,” he said.   

Regarding the opposition of some legislators and sectors to the poll automation, Mugica maintained that they expect such resistance. 

“Whenever you are trying to make elections cleaner and more transparent, you will find resistance. So there are people, there would be people, that will feel threatened by cleaner and transparent elections. Those who benefit from cheating – financially or politically – will be against automation. So we’ll find critics, we’ll find attacks... and that we have to fight against,” he added.

The consortium is willing to reveal the “source code” of the automation system as demanded by some critics. A source code is a computer programming language that can show if the system can easily be hacked or tampered with.

Flores said Smartmatic-TIM would make public the source code “for sure” as it is one of the requirements in the Comelec’s request for proposals.

“We stick to that commitment, we have no objection. In fact we encourage that the source code be reviewed, it’s one of the ways that the different political parties will feel comfortable with the system. That for sure will be done,” he added.

Asked about the “wire burning” incident involving a Smartmatic machine during the demonstration before the Comelec’s Special Bids and Awards Committee (SBAC), Flores gave assurances that this would not happen again.

The bidder showed the committee that their machines could operate on battery power for 12 hours straight.

“We indeed made a mistake during the testing by bringing the wrong cable to be connected to the battery... However, it was not a short circuit of the battery, it was not a short circuit of the machines. Our commitment is that during (election day), we’ll use the best quality cable connection,” he said.

Flores added their PCOS machines would not require “human intervention” and that they are “flexible” for all the requirements of the Comelec.

“The technology is here to adapt to what Comelec and the law mandate. It is very important that the technology is flexible and we’ll listen to all the opinions. The Comelec will make the decision on how the procedure will be followed,” he maintained.

Meanwhile, Sen. Richard Gordon, proponent of the election modernization in the country and principal author of RA 9369 or the amended Automated Elections System Law, lauded the Comelec for successfully going through and concluding the bidding process for the automated election project.

Gordon said the Comelec showed its sincerity in ensuring automation of next year’s elections when it issued the resolution awarding the automation project to the winning bidder.

“The Comelec should be commended for going through the process of choosing the company that will provide the technology for our automated polls. This will take the nation a step closer to attaining every Filipino’s dream of participating in a clean, honest and credible election in their lifetime,” he said. - Sheila Crisostomo, Christna Mendez