This is my article in the 4 January 2012 edition of the Business Mirror.
In 2012 the Commission on Elections (Comelec) will have to start its preparations for the coming election year in earnest. The Comelec Advisory Council will have to play its part by finally coming out with its technology recommendation for the automated elections of 2013. Based on that recommendation, Comelec picks up the ball and starts the process going that will eventually result in an automated elections system being procured.
After procurement, the education effort will begin in earnest with Comelec again introducing the automated election system to the general public. Will it be easier this time, compared to 2010? Perhaps. It will help immensely if the AES procured for 2013 will have the same user interface as the one we used in 2010, but it really is still too early to tell. For now, we await the Advisory Council’s pronouncement with bated breath.
On other fronts, Comelec will be no less busy. By the end of March, the period for filing party-list petitions will have come to a close. Registration for both overseas absentee voters and voters here at home, on the other hand, will come to an end in October. If trends are any indication, then there will be a spike in the number of people going to Comelec offices beginning the first week of October. Coincidentally, there will also be a sharp increase in accusations of Comelec inefficiency and incompetence during this time as applicants are confronted by microphones and tv cameras while they wait in line to do something they could have done much more easily if they had only done it sooner. Of course, the irony will be lost on most everyone.
At roughly the same time, we will begin to see a proliferation of streamers all across our urban landscapes as politicians with a moist eye on the next polls will strive to build up their name recall and goodwill. For some inexplicable reason, despite the volume of complaints about these early campaigners, apparently enough of them eventually win to convince the next crop of politicians that it is in their best interest to ignore public safety and uglify the environment for the sake of an electoral victory.
2013 will also be the year when, hopefully, Congress will finally pass key election legislation. The bill making voter validation mandatory, for instance, should be passed as soon as possible if we are to have a shot at a 100-percent cleaned-up list of voters by 2013. Otherwise, we’ll have to postpone the accomplishment of that goal all the way back to 2016.
Voter validation is the process by which a person verifies the status of his registration as a voter. If this is made mandatory, Comelec will be able to capture the biometrics data of voters who still don’t have their biometrics in the system. When the biometrics database is complete, i.e., 100 percent of registered voters are enrolled in the system, multiple registrants will be a thing of the past.
We’re also looking forward to some accommodation being legislated for journalists who can’t vote because they’re off on assignment on election day. This is particularly close to my heart as I get to talk to these journalists in the course of my work. I find it supremely ironic that we rely on the Fourth Estate to keep politicians and elections honest through their hard work and dedication, and yet deny them the power of suffrage precisely because they have to be at work protecting it. With new legislation pending in Congress, this injustice finally may be eradicated.
But we aren’t only looking to Congress for much needed innovations in the New Year. Already, the groundwork has been laid for a pioneering effort at improving Comelec’s ability to enforce the laws on election spending. The Campaign Finance Unit will continue its work throughout 2012, hopefully to ensure that a new framework of regulatory and enforcement mechanisms will be in place by 2013. Also in the works are initiatives aimed at addressing the need to ensure that indigenous peoples are guaranteed full access to the electoral process—an indispensable component of human rights.
And of course, 2012 will still reverberate, not with the noise of firecrackers—which were in pleasantly scarce supply this year—but with echoes of the historical electoral-sabotage cases filed by Comelec in the closing months of 2011.
All told, if the year that was had Comelec hopping, that year yet to be will probably have the constitutional body gasping for air before it’s half-way through. That will be a good thing too. Like a prize fighter with a big match looming on the horizon, Comelec needs to start getting in shape now, so that it’ll be in fighting trim by 2013.