At least six presidential candidates expressed doubt in the capability of the Commission on Elections to implement automated elections nationwide on May 10 with some of them calling it "ambitious" and portending that it can lead to an "electronic Garci" controversy.
Even administration standard bearer Gilbert Teodoro Jr. was vocal about his fears saying that the manner the Commission on Elections was implementing the new balloting system so far proved it to be an "ambitious project" to be implemented nationwide.
"The integrity of the elections is vital... automation is fine but the way it is implemented, I would have my doubts," Teodoro said Monday in a presidential forum organized by the Foreign Correspondent Association of the Philippines in Makati City.
He added that Comelec has been facing "big logistical difficulties" and that the last batch of machines would be delivered only in the last week of February. Teachers who would operate the ballot scanning machines would be trained only by March, said Teodoro.
"There is really a need to engage the Comelec in disclosing whether or not it can be implemented as a credible [system] for the upcoming elections," said Teodoro.
Other presidential candidates present in the debate were Senators Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino, Richard Gordon and Jamby Madrigal, environmentalist Nicanor "Nicky" Perlas, evangelist Bro. Eddie Villanueva and Councilor JC delos Reyes.
Sen. Manuel Villar, standard-bearer of the Nacionalista Party, and former President Joseph Estrada were invited but failed to attend due to other engagements outside Metro Manila.
Villar has yet to arrive from Hong Kong, where he sought the endorsement of El Shaddai leader Bro. Mike Velarde while Estrada was on a campaign sortie in Davao.
Aquino, the standard-bearer of the Liberal Party, said he was "perplexed" that Comelec has been all over the place, assuring people of honest and orderly elections but has not been putting in place enough measures to ensure credible elections.
"In the following days we hope to come out with a list of actions that the Comelec must be doing prior to the elections and people should be pressuring the various agencies to actually implement the things they are supposed to do," he answered.
Perlas pointed out that no matter how good the intentions were for automating the electoral process, it would still have "serious problems in so many levels."
He said he would support moves to make sure that there was manual-count capability during the elections, noting that even First World countries like Germany and the Netherlands scrapped automated elections in 2009 after finding out that a high school student could hack the voting machines.
"There is a strong possibility of an electronic Garci [in this case]," said Perlas, referring to the "Hello Garci" poll fraud scandal in which President Macapagal-Arroyo was caught in a voice recording making a phone call to an election commissioner widely believed to be Virgilio Garcillano to follow up her one-million vote lead in the counting.
Agreeing with Perlas, Madrigal said the Comelec must take up back-up mechanisms in case the machines failed to deliver on elections day. One of these measures could be a manual counting of votes that would coincide with the automated canvassing for "verification purposes," she said.
She also wondered why the Comelec scrapped a feature in the machines that allowed votes for a particular candidate to be verified.
"I am really cynical about this because the government has not changed, which is still under President Macapagal-Arroyo and it might order the Comelec to [manipulate] the elections for their secret candidate, which is Villar," she said later in an ambush interview.
Teodoro also added during the forum that the Comelec must divulge an "honest to goodness" appraisal of what the Comelec could do and could not do and its degree of confidence in implementing the automated elections.
"They must disclose what the true state of affairs is regarding the matter," he told reporters in a interview after the forum.
Meanwhile, Villanueva suggested during the discussion that he and his fellow presidential candidates must agree to a covenant that would oppose any "brutal violations" of the Filipinos' democratic and constitutional rights to prevent failure of elections.
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