Press Release
August 9, 2009

Gordon asks Supreme Court not to restrain conduct
of automated polls in 2010

Senator Richard Gordon (Ind.) expressed hope that the Supreme Court would consider favorably the motion to intervene to be filed by the Senate legal counsel and not restrain the conduct of automated elections in 2010.

This is in response to the pending petition by the Concerned Citizens Movement at the Supreme Court that principally raises the issue of the Comelec's non-compliance with Sec. 5 of the RA 9369 or the Amended Automated Election law, which states that "FOR THE REGULAR NATIONAL AND LOCAL ELECTION, WHICH SHALL BE HELD IMMEDIATELY AFTER EFFECTIVITY OF THIS ACT, THE AES SHALL BE USED IN AT LEAST 2 HIGHLY URBANIZED CITIES AND TWO PROVINCES EACH IN LUZON, VISAYAS, AND MINDANAO."

"We hope that the Supreme Court appreciates the clear language of the law, that Comelec was granted authority to conduct partial automation in 2007, and further mandated to implement in the succeeding polls, i.e. in 2010, nationwide automation, but that the former is not a pre-condition to the latter," said Gordon who authored RA 9369 and first chaired the senate panel of the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on Automated Elections System that pushed for automated polls in 2010.

He also pointed out that the 2008 ARMM automation was successfully held and it convinced both Houses to grant the supplemental budget. The intent of Congress to grant the Comelec authority to implement nationwide automation in 2010 was made clearer with the grant of a supplemental budget of P11.3 Billion, after lengthy deliberations in plenary.

The group who raised the issue against holding automated polls in 2010 said that "pilot testing" of automated polls was a pre-condition for holding full automated polls in 2010.

"We must also consider that the words "pilot testing" cannot be found in the law. What the law says is that there is authority to use an AES in the elections immediately after passage of the law. There is no indication that it is a condition precedent to the authority to use AES nationwide in succeeding regular national or local elections," said Gordon.

He also cited that this is supported by Section 12 of the law which independently describes the AES to be used in 2010 as having "demonstrated capability and been successfully used in a prior electoral exercise here OR ABROAD. Participation in the 2007 pilot exercise shall not be conclusive of the system's fitness."

Gordon explained that requiring Comelec to first undergo the exercise intended to have been performed in 2007 will keep the nation one step behind in the path to nationwide automation. This will, as a consequence, punish the country with manual elections in 2010.

"The automation of our elections was promised to our people when democracy was restored in 1987. It is time that we delivered on this promise, for how can we claim to have restored true democracy when the results of our elections since 1992 have been plagued in unresolved issues primarily due to manual elections?" said Gordon.

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