Iran 2009: What it portends for RP 2010

By Felicito C. Payumo

COMMENT

07/02/2009

While tracking the unfolding turmoil in Iran, I could not help being spooked by the images of the bloody streets of Teheran segueing to Manila and the provinces. Not this year, but next!

Watching the youth and the educated middle class of Teheran and other cities with only sticks and stones to match the arms and truncheons of the police and militia was an explosive event that surprised everyone outside Iran. What triggered the turmoil? A mere allegation of fraud by the camp of losing presidential candidate could not have been the fuse.

But the suspicion of a rigged election gained credence. Since the revolution of 1979, Iranian rulers had valued the importance of fair and clean elections because it was essential for the legitimacy of the system.

The Iran account is to depict what the events in Iran portend if we are not able to conduct a clean, fair, and most important, transparent elections in 2010. In Iran, it was the allegation of a rigged election that caused the streets to explode. In the Philippines, it is the lack of transparency in the automated election system in 2010 that could trigger mayhem not just in the cities but in the provinces.

Earlier, we endorsed the TransparentElections.org system that uses manual voting and counting at the precinct level but automated canvassing from precinct, to municipal, provincial, city and national levels. The reasons were:

1. Cost. The big budget of P11.3 billion would not be all required if only the canvassing is automated. Ordinary PCs can replace the 82,000 costly PCOS machines.

Spending P7.2 billion for acquiring PCOS machines for voting and counting in order to save a few hours out of the 12 hours needed for the manual process flies in the face of the Pareto Principle! What cries out to be automated is the manual canvassing of votes that takes the rest of the 45 days to complete. Automating the canvassing process with the use of less costly PCs will reduce the entire election timeline to only a week, and cost to P2 million at the most.

2. Tight schedule. Through no fault of the Comelec, the budget for automation was approved late by Congress that left Comelec only a few months to bid out the automation project, award the contract, manufacture the 82,000 units, deliver, test, and deploy them, train 40,000 technicians, 500,000 teachers, and 40 million voters who will have to shade ovals for the first time on 1,610 versions of ballots with pre-printed names of national and local candidates in small font due to the large number of candidates and party-lists, assure that there are no errors in printing and delivery of the ballots, and pray to God that no hitches happen at each step of the way! Hitches may happen on a scale that spells “failure of elections.” Blame should be shared by its Technical Advisory Board. They could not have been that clueless of these risks!

3. And last, but most important, is the element of transparency, or the lack of it. Even, assuming we beat Murphy’s Law, the voters will not witness the counting process — an event everyone looks forward to during elections. After everyone has cast his ballot, the machine will automatically count the votes, and the results posted at designated places. For the first time, the voters will not see a running score with taras on blackboards; they will read the printed results only at the end of the game. Will the people accept such results? What if they are contrary to their expectations? Will we see placards all over the country also asking “where is my vote?” Can this trigger violence from losing local candidates?

And we are not even talking about what experts say is a possibility — electronic tampering with the results — and not necessarily by outside hackers.

And how does a candidate file an electoral protest? I have seen the importance of manually written ballots in the last elections when all three opposition candidates for mayor in Bataan who filed their protests were able to prove thousands of ballots as fraudulent.

Experts can easily determine if the handwriting was done by the same or different hands. But how to detect fraudulent ballots by examining shaded ovals?

It’s the recourse to an electoral protest that opens a vent for losing candidates who feel cheated to let off steam while entertaining some hope. Close it and you push them to a violent course.

Just as the resolution on the con-ass serves only as the House expression of intent to violate the Constitution, the protest rallies against con-ass also serve only as warning against the administration that it will be opposed.

But lest the authorities mistake the tame rallies against con-ass as a sign that Filipinos have lost their capacity for outrage, the conduct of the automated elections in 2010 is different. It is a watershed in the history of Philippine elections. Successfully implemented, and perceived to have been fair, clean, honest, and transparent, the elections will be the crowning achievement of President Arroyo and the Comelec. But mishandled, it can be a deluge that will engulf us all.

(F. C. Payumo was a three-term Representative of the 1st District of Bataan and a former Chairman and Administrator of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority. He is currently Chairman of the Board of the University of Nueva Caceres).

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