Comelec seeks P20B for 2013 polls; Senators shocked
08/17/2010 Getting congressional approval of an P11.3-billion budget for the 2010 presidential automated elections proved easy for the Commission on Elections (Comelec) commissioners by bringing up a rosy picture to a fraud free election through automated counting machines. So easy it was that the poll body is now calling for practically a doubling the budget, with the price tag of P20 billion. Senators, during a Senate hearing were aghast at the audacity of the Comelec officials’ estimated cost for the automated 2013 mid-term elections. Commissioner Rene Sarmiento informed the Senate committee on local governments headed by Sen. Ferdinand “Bong-Bong” Marcos that the poll body is expected to spend anywhere from P15 billion to P20 billion for the 2013 polls. The estimated cost does not include the barangay and Sagguniang Kabataan polls, which will be conducted on a manual mode. “Are you serious? That’s too big a budget for elections,” Senator Marcos said. “We managed to hold automated elections with P11.3 billion in May, that included the buying of the machines and the training of the people which we will no longer have to do, such as the leasing of the machines and the training of the people,” Marcos said. To date, however, even with the P11.3 billion budget, the Comelec failed miserably to prevent electoral fraud, and worse, took out all of the safety features that were required by the election law. Comelec never even bothered to makes its transactions transparent either, and to this day, there has been no accounting of the P11.3 billion budget spent for the 2010 polls. Source: The Daily Tribune URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/headlines/20100817hed4.html |
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