Recipe for instability.

(From Philippine Daily Inquirer)

THE REJECTION by the Commission on Elections of the application for accreditation of Namfrel to conduct a quick count in the 2004 elections confirms its well-known obsession to exclude that civic organization from the unofficial poll counting process. Comelec Chair Benjamin Abalos stated the wrong reasons for the exclusion. He said that "with poll computerization in place," the Comelec thinks it does not need a citizens' arm "to keep an eye on the conduct of the 2004 elections." He said the Comelec is now capable of carrying out a quicker operation. "We cannot accredit Namfrel because it cannot do it faster than us."

Abalos is wrong on both counts. First, factually, computerization is not "in place." Secondly, it does not have the capacity to do a "quicker count." Given these inadequacies in the vote counting mechanism of the Comelec, there is little reason to be confident that the Comelec's "computerization" can deliver election results within a few days, much less hours, of the closing of the polls and that it can ensure clean and honest elections.

Given the politically turbulent circumstances surrounding the 2004 elections, it is extremely important that the elections be perceived to be free and fair, in order to give legitimacy to the next government. A failure of the elections, partly due to the Comelec's ineptitude, is a recipe for a post-election period of political turbulence.

There are signs that the Comelec's machinery is already faltering and that the poll body is ill-prepared to cope with the huge demands of conducting fair elections. As of last month, only 565,375 of an estimated 5.263 million new voters had registered and validated their registration. The registration ends on Nov. 9.

The Comelec has to register about 12 million new voters, 70 percent of whom are in the 18-21 age group. The new voters are in addition to the more than four million voters excluded from the voters' list in 1998 and 2001. Contrary to its claim that it can handle the registration of the enlarged electoral list, the Comelec has ...