With just 119 days before the May elections, long-time employees at the National Printing Office (NPO) are calling for an agency shakedown amid allegations of corruption among its officials involved in various printing contracts, including the P780-million supply and printing of 55 million ballots for the upcoming national and local elections.

Requests for separate investigations are pending at the Senate and the House of Representatives on NPO’s awarding of the P780-million contract to Holy Family Printing Co., a purely privately-owned firm, disregarding security demands for the voting materials.

This year’s election is the second time the Comelec is using the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines supplied by Venezuelan marketing company Smartmatic. The 2010 automated vote-counting was far from being perfect, but it was nonetheless satisfactorily successful as the results in the presidential and vice presidential races were known in less than 24 hours with almost 70 percent of the votes canvassed.

With a new technology, election lawyer Luie Tito Guia used to say that cheaters have probably not acquainted themselves with the system and were still discovering how to go around it.

Three years after, computer wizards must have found out the secrets to play around the technology. They can intervene at any stage of the process, including the programs involved in ballot printing, and in the processing of these ballots until the results are out, hence tainting the credibility of the election results. That’s where the concerns must be coming from.

We cannot avoid thinking that the NPO employees have vested interests, too. By farming out the printing jobs to private companies, the employees are deprived the opportunity to earn extra for overtime work. The employees are used to rendering overtime work during ballot printing, segregating and packaging.

NPO, as always, would say it does not have adequate printing machines to print the 55 million ballots on time. But there are two other recognized government printers, the APO Production Unit and the Bangko Sentral Printing Office to help out.

It can also do what it does with other printing jobs from other government agencies—leasing the equipment from private companies and have these run or supervised by experienced NPO employees to keep the sanctity of the ballots.

If I remember right, Holy Family was embroiled in a controversy during the 2004 elections for allegedly printing excess ballots. The 2004 elections, of course, is best remembered for the “Hello, Garci!” scandal that purportedly involved massive rigging of election results in favour of then president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo who was pitted against popular actor and charismatic candidate Fernando Poe Jr.

Adding to the NPO employees’ concerns is the indicted of the agency’s acting director Emmanuel Andaya, and six other NPO officials involved in the questionable sub-contracting of printing jobs to a Cebu-based company for violations of the anti-graft and the procurement reform laws.

Apart from Andaya, facing charges at the Sandiganbayan are NPO assistant director Raul Nagrampa, chief administrative officer Sylvia Banda, printing operations chiefs Josefina Samson and Antonio Sillona, budget officer Bernadette Lagumen, printing operations assistant chief Ma. Gracia Enriquez and private printers Ivan Go and Vincent Go of Cebu’s JI Printers Inc.

The case arose from a complaint by private printer Guillermo Sylianteng Jr., who used to be a favored printer at NPO under previous administrations, but was eased out a couple of years ago after bagging a juicy contract that was contested by another bidder.

Sylianteng was barred from participating in NPO biddings for a year, and was even blacklisted on account that he falsified his tax records submitted as a bidding requirement to NPO.

The issue prompted Syliangteng to question NPO’s subcontracting of printing job orders to various private printing companies. He has filed more than a dozen cases similar to the NPO contract with JI Printers that are still pending at either the Office of the Ombudsman or the regional trial courts.

Senior NPO employees, who refused to be identified by name for fear of reprisal, said they are wondering if the current Malacañang occupants are interested in safeguarding the sanctity of the ballots and other election materials, as well as government forms like official receipts. If they are, then a shakedown of the NPO is in order.

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