CLEAN, honest and peaceful in Pangasinan.

This was how the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting  (PPCRV) and the Provincial Elections Office described the May 10 election in the province.

“It was generally clean, honest and peaceful,” said lawyer Cornelia Espanol, a representative of the PPCRV of the Lingayen-Dagupan Archdiocese in a talk at the KBP forum on Thursday.

This was corroborated by Provincial Elections Supervisor Reddy Balarbar who was also present during the forum.

Balarbar said his office has yet to receive a formal complaint from any of the losing candidates alleging that he or she was cheated in the first automated elections in the country.

He added that apart from being clean, the automated elections proved efficient in reporting results of precinct counts.

Espanol said the nation achieved some material objectives in the automated election and expressed confidence that that the system can be adopted in future elections with just a few innovations.

She did admit that there were some glitches in the system but that this being the first automated election, it could not have been expected to be perfect.

The breakdown of some Compact Flash Cards (CFCs) of some Precinct Count Optical Scans (PCOS) was very unfortunate, she said, but this could not have caused much anxiety if the Commission on Elections had reserved CFCs and PCOS.

She also cited the slowing down of electronic counting and the transmission of results owing to absence of replacements from other sources other than the Smartmatic warehouse in Cabuyao, Laguna.

Espanol also noted that there was imbalance in the clustering of precincts, thus cramming some precincts with up to 700 or more voters while others had only up to 300 voters.

Balarbar said they will hold an evaluation conference soon to identify where and how major problems occurred and submit recommendations for future polls.

WHISTLE-BLOWER

At the same time, both Espanol and Balarbar laughed off allegations of a supposed whistle-blower who claimed that  “dagdag-bawas” was committed to favor national and local candidates.

Balarbar said it is easy to allege that fraud was committed but evidence must be presented to back up such charges.

Balarbar said it is likely that the automated elections will be adopted for the barangay elections slated in October this year.

The PCOS machines used in the last elections, rented by the Comelec from Smartmatic, will be bought by the government soon, he said.—LM

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