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Borra: Ombudsman probe on poll execs' case 'illegal'


Elections Commissioner Resurreccion Borra insisted on Thursday that the Ombudsman is barred by the Constitution from investigating officials of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) in relation to the automated counting machine controversy. In his petition before the office of the Ombudsman, Borra reiterated that only the House of Representatives has power to investigate incumbent impeachable officials. Borra is seeking an exemption from the July 19 decision of Acting Overall Deputy Ombudsman Orlando Casimiro, who restated his panel's authority to investigate any serious misconduct committed by impeachable officials while in government service. The panel is evaluating the matter for purposes of filing a verified complaint for impeachment before the House of Representatives. Casimiro made the ruling in response to the manifestations filed by Comelec Chair Benjamin Abalos and Commissioners Borra and Florentino Tuason Jr, assailing the investigatory power of the Ombudsman over incumbent impeachable officials. A panel chaired by Casimiro is investigating the liabilities of election officials in the anomalous and nullified P1.3-billion poll computerization contract with the Mega Pacific consortium. Clarificatory hearings related to the investigation into the controversy resumed Thursday. Borra argued that under the Constitution, it is the House of Representatives that has the exclusive authority to initiate all cases for impeachment and, that the "authority to initiate" impeachment proceedings includes "the investigation to discover the facts and uncover the evidence needed in filing the verified complaint for impeachment." "Indeed, a verified complaint for impeachment can be filed only by a member of the House of Representatives or by any citizen upon resolution of endorsement by any member of the House of Representatives and not by any other agency of the government," he stressed. Meanwhile, Secretary Estrella Alabastro of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) told the Casimiro panel that her office did not have a hand in preparing the specification and bid documents for the automated counting machines (ACMs). Alabastro said the DOST only tested the machines submitted by the top two bidders – Mega Pacific and Technical Information Management – and later on issued a technical evaluation based on the testing. The testing and evaluation, she added, was based on the 27 technical requirements set by the Comelec. She claimed that 14 requirements were directly related to the counting of ballots while the rest were related to the canvassing and evaluation of the ballots. The Comelec has set the level of accuracy rating of the machines to 99.995%, which means that each ACM is allowed only one error for every 200,000 marks. DOST personnel supposedly tested 1,991 automated counting machines, of which 1,973 units passed while the remaining 18 units did not meet the requirements. The 18 ACMs failed the first round due to defective feeder rollers, defective liquid crystal displays (LCDs), undefined errors as the machines stopped reading, lost cable connections and hanged, Alabastro said. She added that during the endurance testing, the ACM scored a 100% accuracy rating in continuously counting a total of 440,000 votes for a period of 14 hours.-GMANews.TV

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