WITH the elections only two weeks away, more attention is being paid to the safety of poll equipment and the readiness of election officials and volunteers.
Security will be tight during the transfer of the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines from the main hub in Cebu City to its sub-hubs in the province.
Acting Cebu Provincial Police Chief Erson Digal said the police’s security arrangements are in place, in coordination with the 78th Infantry Battalion.
Meanwhile, the civil society group Pagbabago! is training their volunteers to monitor and document election-related offenses, fraud and violence.
“Today’s session highlights the significance of a partnership with the academe in this election,” convenor Janet Albina told at least 40 volunteers from institutions like the University of the Philippines, St. Theresa’s College and Cebu Institute of Technology, parish leaders and some workers, too.
Cebu City Vice Mayor Michael Rama, also national president of the Vice Mayors’ League of the Philippines, said the automated election requires the full cooperation of all voters and stakeholders to ensure that the new system “reveals the true will of the people.”
Rama, in a news conference, said he plans to meet with Comelec officers to find out if they are 100 percent ready for the elections and have covered the whole city in their voter education campaign.
“There are just too many new things. Unfamiliarity in the use of the PCOS machine requires comprehensive education to ensure understanding of the process, especially that concerns have been encountered,” he said.
Digal said the Special Reaction Unit and Regional Mobile Group (RMG) 7 are prepared to escort the machines, in coordination with the provincial Comelec office.
All that is needed, he said, is the schedule for the transfer.
He did not say when these machines will be transferred or to where, as Smartmatic has requested that the locations and other details be kept confidential for security reasons.
Under Cebu Province, excluding the cities of Cebu, Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu, the police will be transporting 1,047 PCOS machines.
Some 3,000 PCOS machines arrived in Cebu Thursday night on board the Superferry 12 from Manila.
Special Weapons and Tactics personnel escorted the machines to an undisclosed warehouse, which has been identified as the main hub.
Anticipated cases of harassment, fraud and election-related violence surfaced among the most common concerns in yesterday’s Pagbabago! seminar.
It included a basic orientation on the automated electoral system, the group’s history, a basic people’s criteria for the elections and guidelines for the Election Day monitoring.
Trained volunteers will be dispatched outside voting precincts on May 10, in partnership with the church-based election monitor C-Cimpel. C-Cimpel’s volunteers are authorized to stay inside polling precincts.
Organizers said they aspire to be multi-sectoral, which is why they have also conducted training sessions for Minglanilla’s Mary Help of Christians Technical Institute for Women, a batch of workers in Lapu-Lapu and farmers in various mountain barangays in Cebu.
More than 1,000 volunteers have been trained, but there’s still a need, Albina said, for more people to volunteer and contribute to a clean and fair election. (PDF/MEA/Lareina Devi Rajah, UP Intern)