'No failure of elections, no GMA holdover'

MANILA, Philippines - President Arroyo’s election lawyer yesterday dismissed claims by an opposition lawmaker that she would extend her stay in office if there would be a failure of elections.

“There will be no failure of election and there will be no President Arroyo holdover,” lawyer Romulo Macalintal said.

Macalintal was commenting on the statement by Nueva Ecija Rep. Edno Joson that a failure of elections, where the president and vice president could not be proclaimed, could give Mrs. Arroyo an excuse to prolong her stay in office.

He said Joson’s statement was too speculative.

“It should be made clear that the election is actually manual, to which we have been accustomed since the very first polls in our country.”

“What is only automated is the counting of ballots and canvassing of returns,” he said.

“So, if the feared 30 percent failure of PCOS (precinct count optical scanner) to function happens, we’d still be 70 percent automated which means 70 percent faster than the manual polls,” Macalintal explained.

As to the failed 30 percent PCOS, the voting being manual, then the Comelec would have a manual count and manual canvass of 30 percent of the votes cast, he said.

“In other words, even if all the PCOS failed, there’d be no failure because there will still be voting by manually shading the ballots and manually counting and canvassing which will be faster than the old type of manual election since the automated ballots would only be shaded and voters will not have to write the names of candidates.”

Two-way presidential race

Meanwhile, the May 10 presidential elections would be reduced to a two-way race between Senators Benigno Aquino III and Manny Villar, a political analyst said.

Ramon Casiple, executive director of the Institute for Political and Electoral Reform, said with Aquino and Villar consistently topping presidential surveys, it would take a “dramatic event” for other candidates like former President Joseph Estrada and administration candidate Gilbert Teodoro to catch up.

“They (Estrada and Teodoro) really have to do miracles,” he said.

Asked what he thinks were the factors that caused the decline in Aquino’s ratings in the latest pre-election surveys, Casiple said “it’s the negative campaign.”

“He said that he will not steal from the government, but the voters are asking him what he will do if he wins,” he said in Filipino.

“Villar, on the other hand, has been doing this from the start,” Casiple said. “He’s been telling the people that he came from a poor family and he will help the poor to rise from poverty.”

Casiple said the public wants to know more of Aquino, other than being the son of the late former President Corazon Aquino and martyred Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr. 

“I don’t think the people accepted that, the voters are demanding... they won’t vote for Noynoy because he is the son of Cory and Ninoy, he has to prove that he is (worthy of being) the son of Cory and Ninoy.”

Meanwhile, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile urged Villar to moderate his campaign spending.

“I have never seen a candidate that has spent a lot in campaign ads,” Enrile told reporters after attending the weekly Kapihan sa Manila Hotel media forum.

With less than four months to go before the elections, Aquino and Villar are now “statistically tied” at first place in the latest Pulse Asia’s presidential survey.

Villar has overtaken Aquino by one percentage point in a “one-on-one” rider survey dished out by Pulse Asia.   – With Helen Flores