Mrs. Arroyo is set to sign the 11.3 billion peso supplemental budget for the automation of the 2010 elections. Gabby Claudio, the Presidential Adviser for Political Affairs said that, as far as Malacanang is concerned, the bill is sufficient to cover full automation of the elections, even if some Congressmen were seen rushing a hybrid bill sponsored by Cebu Congressman Pablo Garcia (Mrs. Arroyo's closest ally).
Malacanang, it seems, does not want a hybrid. It wants full automation.
However, Cong. Garcia has a point. Republic Act 9369 provides for automated elections only in selected cities and provinces. Garcia proposes to amend the law, since there is still a provision in it which mandates a manual counting of the ballots in the precinct level.
Under the new bill, Congress acts as the national canvasser of senatorial and presidential candidates. Garcia said that under the new law, votes coming from precinct levels generated by computers will not be counted since Congress has a separate manual counting procedure, separate from what the COMELEC will be doing at precinct-level.
What if, for example, there is a great disparity between those votes counted by the COMELEC in the precincts and the cities and those canvassed by CONGRESS coming from the provincial BEI?
Gulo yan.
This is not-so-new-issue.Mrs. President already signed this bill. And the only way we can do is to hope that the budget will go to the right place where it really belongs.
ReplyDeleteyep, that's also a concern.
ReplyDelete