Namfrel supports Duterte’s call to ‘dispose’ Smartmatic

By LITO RULONA
Correspondent .

The local chapter of the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections – Cagayan de Oro (Namfrel-CDO) supports the call of President Rodrigo Duterte to the Commission on Election (Comelec) advise to “dispose” of Smartmatic.

Namfrel-CDO chairman Nestor Mesias Banuag Jr. said the organization statement is a product of on-going sharing, analysis, and discourse among the various local chapters of Namfrel.

“With this, we are in one statement,” he said.

In their press statement, Namfrel has noted that the conduct of the automated elections since 2010 is not without the participation of Smartmatic, a foreign company.  The conduct of Philippine elections, automated or not, should be left at the hands of Filipinos.

Last week, Duterte pronouncement opened up the opportunity to look for other election technologies. It should be noted, however, that Republic Act No. 9369 (RA9369) or the Automated Election Law prescribes that the automated election system “(company) must have demonstrated capability and been successfully used in a prior electoral exercise here or abroad.”

Namfrel has proposed going back to manual voting and counting.  Namfrel clarifies that it does not mean going back to the old manual vote counting process.  The proposed process involves the following:

1)    Manual voting using ballots with blank spaces per contest where the voter writes the names of this choices and the ballot to be dropped in a ballot box;

2)    Computer-assisted vote counting using laptops and LCD projectors to publicly display;

3)    Electronic generation of the election return based on the computer-assisted vote count followed by printing of the election returns;

4)    Electronic transmission of election returns to the corresponding city/municipal canvassing server, and;

5)    Automated canvassing and consolidation of election results.

“It is high time that the Philippines’ IT talents are harnessed for our elections.  Interested stakeholders should push for the law to be amended,” Namfrel said in its statement.