MANILA, Philippines — The cut in the 2022 budget of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) may hinder the chances of holding next year’s polls for more than one day.
According to Comelec spokesman James Jimenez, the budget constraints faced by the poll body will make it hard for them to do away with single-day elections.
“One very obvious complication of a multi-day elections is you have to pay teachers for several days. If it will be two days, then you have to double the honoraria … We might not be able to afford that,” he said in a radio interview yesterday.
Jimenez noted that at least 300,000 teaching personnel are required to administer elections.
He added under the law, compensation for workers has to be higher than in past elections.
“On top of that, DepEd (Department of Education) is asking for hazard pay, food and transportation allowance plus if you double the honoraria, it will eat up all of our budget because our budget is 64 percent less,” he said.
Jimenez was referring to the reduction of the Comelec’s proposed budget for 2022 amounting to P42 billion. This was slashed by the Department of Budget and Management to P26 billion.
There are other concerns that must be considered such as security, he said.
Election lawyer Romulo Macalintal on Thursday also raised various issues on the proposed multi-day voting.
According to Macalintal, who ran but lost in the 2019 senatorial elections, the issue is not constitutionality but practicality.
“It would be impossible to hold multi-day polls because Comelec will open all the 100,000 voting precincts every day,” he said, which he noted would entail billions of pesos. “It’s better said than done so to speak.”
Contingency plans
The Comelec should have contingency plans this early on how to go about the May 2022 general elections in the likelihood that the global health crisis persists, an opposition congressman said yesterday.
“Where’s the plan? We need to see how they will conduct the elections next year for us to understand the necessity of additional or higher budget for the commission,” House Minority Leader Joseph Stephen Paduano said.
“The problem with the Comelec is its failure to present the election plan as to the conduct of next year’s polls during previous House hearings,” the congressman from party-list Abang Lingkod pointed out, in effect justifying cuts to the poll body’s 2022 budget.
Paduano said the Comelec officials should be able to disclose their plans as the House committee on suffrage and electoral reforms continues its hearings on the matter. “We’d like to help them, but we need to see the plan,” he said. – Janvic Mateo, Delon Porcalla