Friday, July 06, 2007 Comelec orders Bogo special board of canvassers to meet in Manila tomorrow
THE long wait for Bogo’s election results may finally end tomorrow in Intramuros.
Elections Commissioner Resurreccion Borra ordered the Cebu Provincial Board of Canvassers (PBOC) to reconvene at 9 a.m. tomorrow in Manila, canvass the remaining municipal returns from Bogo and proclaim the winners.
Also tomorrow, the special board of canvassers headed by lawyer Eddie Aba will convene to canvass the 15 remaining election returns (ERs) from Bogo, but using authentic copies, to confirm who won the fourth district’s congressional contest.
The Commission on Elections (Comelec) Second Division ruled last Tuesday that the 15 ERs were “spurious and manufactured.”
Provincial Election Supervisor Lionel Marco Castillano said that as far as he knows, this ruling was the first of its kind in Cebu and admitted this shows the electoral system is “not 100 percent foolproof.”
He also pointed out that although Comelec is the lead agency, the electoral system also involves the Department of Education and the local government treasurers.
“But rest assured, an administrative investigation will be conducted,” Castillano said.
Bogo Election Officer Jose Menguez will be made to explain, being the supervising officer.
Castillano admitted, though, that as of now, it is hard to determine how the spurious ERs got inside the ballot boxes for the Board of Canvassers.
After getting the order to reconvene, Provincial Election Supervisor Lionel Marco Castillano, who chairs the PBOC, requested Acting Executive Judge Ramon Codilla to appoint a court staff as the third member of the board.
The Department of Education’s Recaredo Borgonia is in Singapore for official business.
For the Cebu-Citizens’ Involvement and Maturation in People’s Empowerment and Liberation (C-Cimpel), the Bogo case confirms the need to have the next election automated, to help minimize the ballots’ exposure to cheating and manual errors.
Manuel Granada, who was in charge of C-Cimpel’s quick count, said every organization concerned must work on the shift from manual to automated elections.
“The electoral problem we have in Bogo City and in Mindanao should serve as a very good lesson to us that an automated process should be tried out in other elections,” said Granada, in a phone interview.
C-Cimpel is a church-based, nonpolitical, nongovernment organization and an election watchdog, which is chaired by Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal Vidal.
Granada said an automated election will also recognize the talents of the youth in information and communications technology.
“As a democratic country, we are blessed to have a chance to vote. But the great problem lies in the poor electoral process, which, for me, has not changed a bit in the last 40 years I have voted,” Granada said.
Expecting that no one will protest an automated election except perhaps bidders and suppliers who debate over the terms, Granada said Comelec should start discussing and planning as early as now the automation of the next election.
“The people, in turn, should learn to tell the truth and trust other people like C-Cimpel members and volunteers who are trying to expose the truth and build trust,” said Msgr. Achilles Dakay, the archdiocese’s media liaison officer, in a phone interview. (MBG/NRC)
