Hybrid or not

WE are nine months away from the filing of certificates of candidacy, and there is still no consensus on the system we will be using for Election Day 2022 and how the Commission on Elections (Comelec) is to manage the elections with the Covid pandemic. As is true of the way in which Comelec moves, during the three off-election years, the agency seems to have been hibernating instead of using the time to build and pursue a time-centric program to prepare for the next election cycle.

Risks have often been associated with elections and risk management has seemed not to be one of the core strengths of Comelec from the start. Problems appear to be constant and certain across election cycles since we adopted the automated election system (AES) in 2010. The weaknesses of the system are almost predetermined, but no solutions have been made and these become problematic for everyone involved in elections. As has been pointed out time and time again, there are no implementing rules and regulations on the AES Law (Republic Act 8436, as amended by Republic Act 9369), and worse, no audit has been done on the AES from 2010 to 2019; hence, knee-jerk reactions every election without settling old issues. These issues boil down to transparency and accountability of the system that has run our elections since 2010.