Press Release
January 25, 2008

Gordon to Comelec: We're fighting a war on poll cheating, act fast!

Senator Richard Gordon criticized the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) for system particularly in the implementation of automated elections in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) polls.

"We are fighting a war on electoral fraud. To fight a war, we have to act fast, and act decisively or else we will lose. Our people will lose. Automated elections should be working by now," said Gordon.

He said that time is running out for computerizing the ARMM elections and everybody is talking about the 2010 national elections, but the Comelec hasn't even started cleaning up the mess it has made of the last elections. "How can we talk about who's going to be president when we cannot fix how they are elected in the position?," Gordon asked.

"We want to end cheating in elections. If we do not modernize our electoral system now, will we wait until 2013? Until 2016? How long will it take? If we don't fix this now, people will always question the elections," the senator explained.

Gordon emphasized that computerizing ARMM in August is vital in rebuilding the credibility in the nation's democratic system and empowering the people to choose their leaders.

"The Filipino people will be the big losers here. The Comelec is not working and instead seems to be delaying the Automated Elections System for 10 years running. We need to drag Comelec kicking and screaming out of its tarnished ivory tower to put the law to work," he said.

Gordon feared that 'we will never have a stable political system. There will always be winners in an election, but until we provide a good automated system, the winners will always be questioned."

Gordon is the chairman of the Senate Committee on Constitutional Amendments, Revision of Codes and Laws, as well as the principal author in the Senate of the Automated Elections bill. Under the approved bill, full automation of the elections nationwide would be implemented in the 2010 national and local elections.

Earlier the senator cited COMELEC's track record of incompetence, with the botched billion-peso voters ID project, the 1.3 billion peso MegaPacific deal struck down by the Supreme Court - for which the COMELEC is still incurring massive expense and has yet to follow the Supreme Court's instructions to get its money back, the Hello Garci scandal, and most recently, the involvement of then Chair Abalos in the ZTE Broadband Deal.

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