The Commission on Elections can turn over the software that will run the May 10 automated elections to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas for safekeeping only next Tuesday and not Friday as originally planned, election officials told lawmakers on Friday.
While the delay in the turnover of the program known as the "source code’’ was a setback, ’ Comelec officials led by Chairman Jose Melo assured its safety in the hands of the US-based SysTest Labs—the expert body that reviewed and certified that the software was in tune with the Automaton Law— until it can be brought to the BSP vault for safekeeping until Election Day.
Lawmakers also expressed concern over the Comelec’s back-up plans for the elections, especially what guidelines the authorities would follow to ensure they know what precisely to do for example when the the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines fail to transmit vote tallies on May 10.
Melo told senators and congressmen that Comelec was supposed to turn over the source code to the BSP on Friday but had to defer it to next Tuesday because a resolution by the Monetary Board, the policy-making body of the BSP, still has to be issued.
"The BSP said this is such an important thing that we will need a Monetary Board resolution,’’ said Melo.
The poll body and the BSP had agreed to keep the source code in a vault inside the BSP for safekeeping until election day.
Comelec Executive Director Jose Tolentino said that in the meantime, Comelec will keep the source code, which is the master copy of the software program contained in two CDs, with SysTest.
Tolentino said they will furnish political parties and interested groups copies of the code "so that before the source code is placed inside the BSP vault all parties will be able to look at the codes... and make sure what is placed inside is one and the same as that finalized by SysTest.’’
At the hearing, interested groups led by the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG) called anew for the poll body to make the source code available for review by them and political parties.
But Melo and other poll officials said they could make available the results of the source review code done by SysTest.
"If it’s not in our control and it’s with them, what if they do something there?’’ Melo said in Filipino, adding that was the reason the source code could not be given to anybody else.
During the hearing, Commission on Information and Communications Technology Secretary Ray Anthony Roxas-Chua reminded lawmakers and other interested parties that the source code was covered by intellectual property rights.
But Sen. Francis Escudero, head of the Senate panel in the oversight committee, disagreed that the source code was covered by IPR.
Both Escudero and Makati City Representative Teodoro "Teddyboy’’ Locsin, who heads the House panel, expressed support for the source code to be open for review by these groups during the hearing.
Escudero said that the software was just a counting program that can be "easily done by a fourth year college student who knows how to make programs.’’
He also expressed surprise why they were now saying there was an IPR issue here when the contract between the Comelec and Smartmatic does not mention anything about intellectual property rights.
"I cannot understand what would be the problem and why the Comelec did not want to show the source code,’’ Escudero told reporters, adding he agreed with the assertions of University of the Philippines Alumni Association president Alfredo Pascual on the need to review the source code to ensure it is exactly what will be used on May 10.
Escudero said the poll body should not treat the source code as if it was a "diamond that cannot be held in case it would be exchanged for a fake.’’
He asked the Comelec to work out a process whereby the source code could be reviewed and tested that indeed it will be same one driving each of the 76,000 PCOS machinese to be used on May 10.
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