I've been having this daily discussions with my mother-in-law, a head teacher at the Sagkahan National High School in Tacloban City, about the readiness of Leyte province for the May 2010 automated elections in the Philippines, and the conclusion is almost always the same—that we will just have to make do with whatever we have.
Being a teacher, dear old MommyLa, known to friends and family as Imelda, Mel or Imee, she is bound by law to help administer elections in this little tropical country. This is the reason why I keep asking her about the upcoming elections. We have an election insider in the family!
Like I told her in one of our "sessions," Leyte would probably end up having partial automation for the elections, with Tacloban City getting full automation. True enough, when I loaded several local news websites this morning, the headlines pointed to the fact that Leyte is one of provinces that doesn't have reliable cellular phone signal through which election returns will be transmitted.
Here are the headlines and appropriate links:
30% of RP has no reliable cellphone signal—Comelec
6 provinces lack telecom facilities - Comelec
Unwired for electronic election
No CP sites? No problem, says Comelec
Although the Commission on Elections has already clarified that the lack of telecommunications facilities in some Philippine provinces, including Leyte, would not be a problem for automation, the specter of a possible failure of elections still looms.
Should we take the chance or go back to the way things were? Share you thoughts.
[Image: USAID]
Oh' I never knew about this before, glad I saw this post. Anyway, the comelec must do the move about this, so that we can avoid problems in this up-coming 2010 election. I just wish for a clean and safe election. Vote wisely!
-pia-
www.ramonguico.com