Adel Tamano gets an answer from COMELEC, Smartmatic
Jan 14th
Comelec, Smartmatic: Pre-shading of ballots unlikely – By Reynaldo Santos Jr., Newsbreak
‘It’s not a question of technology but of security’
Both the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and Smartmatic TIM on Thursday dismissed suggestions that ballots in the first ever automated elections in May might be pre-accomplished by the camps of cheating candidates.
The poll body and the counting machines supplier were responding to a comment made by Nacionalista Party senatorial candidate Adel Tamano, who said the ovals in the newly designed ballots might be shaded by certain quarters in the course of their transfer and delivery from Manila to various precincts nationwide.
The Philippines will be using a new kind of ballot in May, where the names of all candidates will be printed, and the voter has to shade the ovals that correspond to the names of his preferred national and local candidates. The ballot will not be read out by election inspectors and will instead be fed by the voter himself onto the counting machine, which in turn will scan the shades.
Election Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal gave assurances that the colored ballots, to be printed starting on January 25, will be safely and properly delivered to its designated precincts.
He said the ballots will be packed and shipped in a sealed envelope. “The question as to the being shaded beforehand will not happen if the ballots packaging is still sealed” when they reach their destinations, he said.
Manila Times: The country needs more professionals
Jan 14th
BY SHARLENE VALENCIA RESEARCHER
The Philippines should produce more professionals, not more laborers.
The suggestion came on Thursday from Adel Tamano during a roundtable with editors and reporters of The Manila Times.
Tamano, a former president of the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (PLM) and now senatorial candidate of the Nacionalista Party in the May 2010 elections, noted that the government seems to prefer turning out bartenders, plumbers and welders than doctors, engineers and scientists even in an increasingly competitive global village.
Such apparent bias, according to him, shows in a budget shift from the Commission on Higher Education (Ched) to the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda).
“It is an expensive investment but in the long run it will pay off,” Tamano said of his proposal for education authorities to rethink their priorities, not the least the apparent favoring of blue-collar workers.
The former PLM president, himself an educator for 17 years, also suggested that local colleges and universities be weaned from Ched, partly because the commission “has different issues from the LCUs [local colleges and universities].”
Tamano, a lawyer, made the proposal because the local colleges and universities “do not want [anymore] to get a percentage from the pie of the Department of Education because [the department] has enough problems of its own to deal with.”
The LCUs, he said, “do not get any [direct] state funding.”
The government puts up state colleges and universities but falls short in subsidizing them. To make up for the apparent failure, it has created the LCUs.