AUTOMATION FAILURE AN ATTACK ON DEMOCRACY -- ROXAS

Liberal President Senator Mar Roxas today likened the potential collapse of the election automation project for 2010 as an attack on the country's democracy as it will deny Filipinos their eagerly-awaited chance to elect new leaders.

"Our people have long awaited this chance to elect their leaders in clean and honest elections, and automation was seen as a way to break away from the tradition of cheating. Now, even that chance is denied us," Roxas said.

Roxas had earlier written Comelec Chair Jose Melo to express concerns over possible hitches in the planned poll automation system.

"Para sa taumbayang gustong gusto na nang pagbabago, hindi katanggap-tanggap ang anumang dahilan upang ipagpaliban ang eleksyon. Ito na nga lang ang inaasahan ng taumbayan na maging solusyon sa pandaraya, tapos ngayon ay biglang mawawalang parang bula," he said.

"Computerized man o hindi, kailangang matuloy ang eleksyon sa susunod na taon," he said.

"Ang tanong, ano ba ang mga ginawang paghahanda ng Comelec? Hindi puwedeng ngayon pa lang sila magbubuo ng mga contingency measures," he also said.

Comelec's Melo had said the Comelec would be forced to go back to manual voting following the collapse of the Smartmatic-Total Information Management Corp. (TIM) consortium, which won the bidding for the right to lease 82,200 counting machines to be used by the poll body to complete the canvassing of votes in two days instead of weeks under the manual system.

TIM announced its withdrawal from the consortium on Monday, citing irreconcilable differences with Smartmatic.