Philippine President Aquino (left, centre) in a meeting with PM Gillard [click to zoom in]

The Prime Minister offered Australia’s condolences for the loss of lives and devastation caused by typhoons and flooding last month. Australia has provided emergency relief assistance through the Philippine Red Cross and for supplies, food and income support.

The Prime Minister welcomed President Aquino’s commitment to good governance and human rights.

The Prime Minister and the President discussed the agenda for the APEC Leaders’ Summit. The Prime Minister said Australia supported the Summit’s green growth priorities for APEC, including on trade in environmental goods and services.

The Prime Minister looked forward to meeting the President at the East Asia Summit, noting that membership of the EAS by the United States and Russia provided an important opportunity for the EAS to explore its full mandate of economic, political and security issues.

Sent by the Prime Minister’s Office

Commissioner Armando C. Velasco made the announcement in a recent meeting with Convenors of the Global Filipino Nation (GFN), an international coalition of global Filipino leaders and organizations committed to “Building the Global Filipino Nation for Good Governance”.

Commissioner Velasco said: “Comelec supports the goal of global Filipinos to deepen their participation in the election of our national leaders”. He added that: “If one were to consider the dependents of overseas Filipinos who live in the Motherland, they would constitute a large proportion of our population”.

The areas covered by the suffrage broadening program for global Filipinos include legislation on Internet Voter Registration, Internet Voting and the removal of the Affidavit to Return executed by immigrant overseas voters. Doing away with the Affidavit to Return will resolve questions about the necessity of requiring overseas Filipinos to come home.

The GFN Convenors also proposed for Comelec to undertake truly continued, uninterrupted voter registration for global Filipinos. Such a continuing voter registration, in accordance with Section 7 of R.A. 9189, would stipulate a cutoff date for determining eligibility for voting in a given election.

May 10, 2010 Elections... somewhere in Pampanga... Photo: TFA

A year after the 2010 elections, the automated system used in the 2010 national and local elections still casts doubt on the legitimacy of the present Government, a coalition of international and local civil society groups claims.

Tanggulang Demokrasya (TanDem) said Malacanang should lead the investigation of the country’s first automated elections, together with Congress and the Commission on Elections to establish its legitimacy.

TanDem is a network of civil society groups, people’s organizations, information technology experts, overseas Filipino professionals, reform advocates and concerned citizens, calling for the comprehensive review of the May 2010 automated elections.

The coalition group pointed out some sectors still consider the much acclaimed 2010 electoral victory as “null and void” because the automated election system was not carried out in accordance with its implementing legislation.

TanDem said that “the gravest electoral cheating in the country’s history happened in the 2010 elections.”

In seeking inquiry into the 2010 elections, TanDem cited the findings of a team of foreign election observers organised by Global Filipino Nation (GFN) in last year’s elections.

TanDem said the GFN observers noted that a number of safeguards to ensure the integrity of the automated election system were illegally set aside which opened the electoral process and results to fraud undermining the legitimacy of the election results.

Some of these safeguards include the suspension of the digital signatures of the members of the Board of Elections Inspectors (BEI), the elimination of the use of the ultraviolet scanners that were designed to authenticate the ballots being fed into Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines, and the disregard of the law’s provision on data retention that happened when Comelec allegedly destroyed memory cards and compact flash cards a few days after the election day.

The GFN report, released June 2010, was prepared by GFN convenor Victor S. Barrios and team members Jun aguilar, Theodore Aquino, Elsa Bayani, Tim Bayani, Robert Ceralvo, Romeo Cayabyab, and Hermenegildo Estrella Jr.

Following the release of the GFN report, TanDem members of GFN and another civil society group, WE Care, filed a petition with the Supreme Court for the disclosure of all photo images of all ballots to facilitate a recount.

The petition is now pending with the Supreme Court.

Candidates for Riverstone (L-R): Kevin Conolly, Rosie Bonham, Allan Green, Michael Vassili and Anthony Belcastro with Filpress moderator Tom Baena

Last night’s press conference with members of Sydney-based Filipino Press Group gave five candidates aspiring for the Riverstone seat an opportunity to present their political programs.

The one-and-a-half hour conference held in Doonside also gave the candidates an opportunity to speak about their personal life as well as their philosophy outside politics.

The five candidates, Anthony Belcastro (Independent), Rosie Bonham (Independent), Kevin Conolly (Liberal), Allan Green (Christian Democrats) and Michael Vassili (Labor) were each alloted two minutes to introduce themselves and present their political platform.

In the ensuing question-and-answer forum, no specific question was directed to an individual candidate.

All five candidates were each given one minute to answer each question thrown in by a panel pre-selected from members of the organising press group.

During the Q&A forum, the candidates were just too happy to elaborate on their platforms regarding State issues like roads, public transport, hospitals and health services.

The candidates also willingly shared their thoughts on Federal related issues like multiculturalism and National Broadband Network as well as on personal questions like “What would you do if you lose in this election?” or “What is it that makes you more qualified than the other candidates?”

The panel members were Romy Cayabyab (The Filipino Australian), Dino Crescini (Philippine Sentinel), Ronald Manila (SBS Radio), Aida Morden (Philippine Community Herald), Raquel Pellero (Radio Bandila), Nonoy Perdon (Bayanihan News), Millie Phillips (Ang Kalatas), Tom Baena (forum moderator), and Jimmy Pimentel (press group convenor).

The Riverstone electoral district has seven candidates for the March 26 NSW State election. It is considered as a hot battleground seat in next month’s election.

Based on NSW Electoral Commission’s records, the district has 56,978 enrolled voters, the biggest amongst the State’s 93 electoral districts, followed by Sydney’s 56,485 voters.

Rowland thanking the community...

Federal Member for Greenway Michelle Rowland expressed her thanks to community organisations including the Filipino Australian community Association of NSW for helping raise funds for the victims of the Queensland floods.

MS Rowland’s message was delivered in her speech to the House of Representatives last Wednesday February 16.

“The Riverstone Girl Guides, who currently do not even have a clubhouse due to a collapsing roof, put aside their personal fundraising endeavours and chose instead to raise funds for families affected by the Queensland disaster,” Ms Rowland said.

Ms Rowland and the Riverstone Girl Guides held a fundraising BBQ two weekends ago to raise money for the victims of this disaster. In just three hours, the Guides had raised well over $300 by selling their famous cookies and having a sausage sizzle.

“I also thank the members of the Filipino-Australian Community Association of New South Wales. This association has given tirelessly to ensure that the necessary funds are sent to Queensland,” Ms Rowland said.

Ms Rowland won the Greenway seat as a Labor candidate in last August Federal election in a close contest with Filipino Australian Jaymes Diaz (Liberal).

Greenway electorate includes suburbs with a concentration of resident population with Philippine background.

Filipino Australian community leader Ronaldo Villaver will stand as one of the candidates of the Australian Democrats Party in the NSW Legislative Council (Upper House) in the coming March 26 State election.

Villaver was 2009 President of the Philippine Community Council of New South Wales (PCC NSW) and currently the Public Relations Officer of the Filipino Communities Council of Australia (FILCCA). He is also currently Vice Chairperson of the Ethnic Communities Council of New South Wales.

In his communication to The Filipino Australian, Villaver said that he will push for the priorities of the ethnic communities including support for the policies and services related to multiculturalism, increasing participation of ethnic communities in public life, and lobbying for increased budgetary allocations for Community Relations Commission in its funding assistance to non-for–profit organizations.

“Aside from multiculturalism, I will be proposing and reviewing bills related to education, better transport, supporting business and jobs, keeping people safe, healthy and stronger communities, better government as well as on the sustainable development of New South Wales,” added Villaver.

Legislative Council members in the NSW Parliament represent the state as a whole and are elected for a term of eight years.

There are 42 members in the Legislative Council, with 21 elected at each election.

In the Legislative Assembly (Lower House), one Member represents a single electoral district for a term of 4 years. New South Wales has currently 93 electoral districts.

Entrance to the Dolores Elementary School, City of San Fernando, Pampanga, May 10

*** FLASH: Senator Manny Villar who months ago was the frontrunner in surveys has conceded the fight for the presidency in favour of Aquino and ‘urging the people to work behind him (Aquino).’

But the real winners in yesterday’s election are the more than 40 million Filipinos who endured long queues in a hot and humid day. As of midday today, 78 percent turnout was chalked at Comelec’s command centre topping the previous election 69 percent turnout.

A typical scene of voters waiting for hours in polling precincts yesterday

*** For updates, visit the Comelec website on election returns.

Gone are the days when the nation had to wait for days, weeks or even months for the final tally. Gone also are the days when each ballot had to be opened and read by tired and exhausted school teachers comprising the Board of Electoral Inspectors for tallying – only to be interrupted by party poll watchers questioning the read out. Assuming of course that there are no troublemakers outside the poll precinct – with behaviour that could only be a recipe for violent reactions.

Voters checking their names on cluster precinct for verification prior to reporting to election officers

There were reported deaths and violence before and on election day in the Mindanao and other traditional hotspot areas. But, by and large, the election was peaceful.

Notwithstanding the glitches detected in the Smartmatic-designed software six days prior to election, the malfunctioning of PCOS machines in certain poll precincts on election, the inadequate supply of modems to electronically transmit the election returns to authorised Comelec servers, the election only demonstrated the willingness of Filipinos to take on new approaches to the nation’s governance.

Noting voters turnout, the Comelec said that yesterday’s election was a “celebration of democracy.”

Having said all these, the manner by which the 2010 national and local elections was staged definitely calls for a re-think, particularly on ensuring the integrity of the system.

The new poll counting system has been criticised by tech-savvy people that the system has not been fully tested. The glitch which was detected with only six days before election did not leave much room for those who will operate the sytem to properly test the newly configured replacement CF cards.

It is hoped that despite this lack of confidence in the integrity of the system, not to mention the malfunctioning of the PCOS optical scanners which caused Senator Aquino to wait for hours to cast his ballot, the people, especially the losing candidates and their supporters, will accept the digitally compiled vote counts. Otherwise, the Philippines may face more problems than it bargained for with the new automation system.

*** Romy Cayabyab is in Manila as a Comelec-accredited foreign observer.

Electoral inspectors in a Pampanga poll precinct showing test results to this writer and other observers

The main interest in the May 10 elections is whether the counting system to be used will help provide the solution to the country’s problem of massive election cheating.

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) is optimistic that it will.

Comelec chairman Jose Melo has been reported as saying that the new system ‘promises a speedy and accurate count, a highly efficient reporting mechanism that democratizes the count and canvass of election results, and most importantly, the extinction of dagdag-bawas (vote padding and vote shaving).’

For all its novelty, the Comelec expects a bigger turnout than the 69 per-cent turnout in the previous elections.

Records at Comelec show that the Philippines has 50,850,938 voters including more than half a million absentee voters. It has 76,347 clustered precincts with 82,200 Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) voting machines.

Up for grabs are 17,999 positions – one each for president and vice president, 12 for senators, 57 seats for party-list groups, 230 for congressmen, 80 each for governor and vice governor, 766 for provincial board member, 137 each for city mayor and city vice mayor, 1,497 for city councilors, 1,524 each for municipal mayor and vice mayor, and 11,980 for municipal councilors.

Tomorrow’s elections will be remembered not only for automation but also for having the most number of presidential bets – nine.

The presidential candidates are Sen. Benigno Aquino III (Liberal Party), John Carlos de los Reyes (Ang Kapatiran Party), former President Joseph Estrada (Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino), Sen. Richard Gordon (Bagumbayan), Jamby Madrigal (independent), Nicanor Perlas (independent), Gilbert Teodoro Jr. (Lakas-Kampi-CMD), Eduardo Villanueva (Bangon Pilipinas), and Sen. Manuel Villar Jr. (Nacionalista Party).

Vote Counting and Canvassing Automation

The voting system to be used tomorrow is only for vote counting and canvassing to replace manual counting and tallying.

The actual voting itself is still paper-based where the voter needs to manually fill up a ballot. Unlike in the old manual system, however, the new ballot will be pre-printed with the names of candidates. The voter only needs to mark his selections on the ballot. The voter then feeds it into the PCOS machine which scans or takes a picture of the ballot and interprets the picture.

At the end of the voting day, the PCOS will start counting the votes, prints copies of election returns (ER), and transmits the results to the municipal / city canvassing server.

Once all the results are canvassed, the municipal/city canvassers generate and print out canvass reports, and transmit the results to the provincial and national canvassing stations.

At the same time that the ERs are being transmitted to the municipal/city canvassers, they are also being transmitted to the Comelec main server, the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas, the dominant majority party Lakas-Kampi-CMD, and the dominant minority party, the Liberal Party.

The tranmission facilities of Globe Telecom, Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co.-Smart and Sun Cellular will be utitised.

There may be cases during transmission that signals for other services like mobile phones may be weak or none at all to maximise the signal capability of poll results transmission.

Where there is no signal in a particular area, the results will be transmitted via portable satellites or the municipality / city server.

Cost of the Project

The cost of the automation project is P11.3-billion awarded to Venezuelan firm Smartmatic International and its Filipino partner Total Information Management (TIM).

Smartmatic-TIM is to supply the 82,200 precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines for 76,347 polling precincts across the country. The almost 6,000 additional machines are intended as backup.

Each machine is configured to canvass a maximum of 1,000 voters in a clustered precinct, combining previous four to five adjacent polling precincts.

System Testing and Glitches

Notwithstanding the optimism and assurance of both the Comelec and Smartmatic, the contractor, there are fears that the system may fail.

Last Monday, some PCOS machines failed in test runs, not counting the votes cast for local candidates whose names are printed on the backpage of the official ballots.

Smartmatic head Cesar Flores said the glitch was traced to the software installed in the compact flash cards not correctly reading the backpage of the official ballots. He said that there was a last-minute change in the design of the backpage of the official ballot by providing double-spacing instead of single-spacing.

To solve the problem, Smartmatic-TIM produced compact flash cards with the new settings to replace the more than 60,000 cards already despatched across the country.

As of last Thursday, Mr Flores confirmed in a briefing with foreign observers and media representatives that 40,000 replacement cards had already been delivered with the rest no later than before the opening of polls on election day.

This leaves hardly any time for testing by the precinct election inspectors.

Fast Canvass Results

Smartmatic-TIM estimates that by midnight of May 10, some 50 to 70 percent of votes shall have been canvassed.

The Comelec is also confident that the whole process would take about 48 hours from start to finish.

The Comelec will convene as the National Board of Canvassers for the senators and party-list groups while Congress will serve as the canvassing board for the president and vice president.

Whilst the returns may already be in, still the date of the official proclamation of the winning president and vice-president candidates is yet to be firmed up.

Contingency plans

The Comelec said it has contingency plans in case things don’t turn out as planned.

The plan includes “Backup poll data is kept on removable storage systems in each machine so that space facilities in other precincts or polling centres can be reconfigured to scan, count, transmit or canvass data from non-functioning machines.”

Also on a PCOS-machine level, in case of power failure, the PCOS machines also shipped with a 12-hour battery-operated Uninterrupted Power System (UPS) unit.

Technicians will also be positioned at polling precincts and canvassing centers to ensure that the PCOS operations are uninterrupted.

Comelec has also listed down contingency technical-related action plans like in case the data storage is not available or when there is database service interruption as well as other action plans in case of fire, flooding and earthquake.

*** Romy Cayabyab is in Manila as a Comelec-accredited foreign observer.

Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal responding to a question. In background, standing, Smartmatic's Cesar Flores

The assurance was in response to concerns that the glitch found in the automated vote counting software during this week’s test run would cause failure in the poll machines already distributed in more than 76,000 clustered precincts.

Commissioner Larrazabal’s optimism was shared by Mr Cesar Flores, head of Smartmatic, the vote counting software developers, who was also on hand during the briefing to demonstrate how the machines will be operated on the precinct level.

Mr Flores also reported that the more than 76,000 memory cards with new configurations to replace those already in the vote counting machines spread across the country had already started to ship.

He said that, as of yesterday, more than 46,000 memory cards had already been shipped. He expects that the more than 76,000 machines would have the replacement cards by Monday.

The software problem related to reading and counting the votes for local candidates listed on the back page of the ballot form.

According to reports, the official ballot form for the local candidates had been re-designed to allow for double-spacing from the original single spacing.

The original application installed in the vote counting machines was designed to read single-spacing entries.

*** Romy Cayabyab is in Manila as a Comelec-accredited foreign observer.

He will be posting his comments and observations about the Philippine elections on this page. We invite our readers to share their thoughts on the May 10, 2010 elections using the comments box below.