Monday, November 26, 2012

2013 Philippine Elections Preparation

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) will be saving millions of pesos once the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) grant their request to re-use the 60,000 ballot boxes.

Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes said if the PET would allow them to re-use the ballot boxes, which are part of the election protest filed by Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) Secretary Mar Roxas against Vice-President Jejomar Binay in 2010, they would be saving a lot of money.

"That's 80,000 (ballot boxes) worth P200 million. What we proposed is that we will take out the contents of three ballot boxes and put in just one box. If we do that we would be able to free about three-fourths or about 60,000," he said.

Brillantes noted that if the request would be granted they would only have to bid out 20,000 ballot boxes for the May 2013 polls.

"We're going to save a lot of money because we only need to bid 20,000 new ballot boxes," he said.

The PET is expected to come out with a resolution on Tuesday regarding the poll body's request.

The poll body chief said that who ever wins in the bidding for the ballot boxes, they need to get the copy of the module from Smartmatic Corp., the manufacturer of the old ballot boxes, for their guide.

He also said that the winning bidder would have to pay a royalty fee to Smartmatic.

"But they (Smartmatic) can also participate in the bidding -- either way Smartmatic won't be short-changed because if they win in the bidding they won't need to pay the royalty fee. If they lose, they'll get a royalty fee from the winning bidder," he said.

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