Comelec says more than P1B wasted as it restarts preps for BARMM polls

Commission on Elections. Inquirer file photo.

MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Elections (Comelec) admitted that the conduct of the Bangsamoro polls next year poses several challenges as it now has to redo all of its preparations given the need for a new redistricting law, with more than P1 billion worth of materials and payments already wasted.

“We will admit that the Comelec has a problem regarding the conduct of elections on March 31. It is not just operational, but also the preparations of the Comelec depend on the action of, with all due respect, the Bangsamoro parliament,” Comelec Chair George Erwin Garcia said in a press conference on Thursday.

Garcia said that the Comelec is now “back to zero” with all its activities, after the Supreme Court declared that both of the laws on the distribution of parliamentary districts, Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 77 and BAA 58, that were passed by the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA), were unconstitutional.

The high court gave the BTA until Oct. 30 to create a new redistricting law, while it directed the Comelec to “promptly proceed” with its preparations and conduct the Bangsamoro elections not later than March 31 next year.

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Garcia said the Comelec will follow the directive of the Supreme Court to proceed with the poll preparations, but admitted that it would be difficult to do so while the BTA has yet to pass a law on the distribution of districts.

“All preparations will have to start when there is already a law. Maybe there are some that we can do that have no relation to the law, but most of the activities of the Comelec are done when there is a law on how they will allocate the districts,” he said.

Among the preparatory activities that the Comelec needs to redo is the printing of ballots, since the ones that were produced earlier were still based on BAA 58 and will have to be discarded.

According to Garcia, the discarded ballots amounted to an estimated loss of P500 million. Total losses, on the other hand, given the payments for the procurement and deployment of various election materials, may reach up to more than P1 billion, the Comelec chief said.

“We are still computing [the amount of losses], but to my understanding it will not be less than P1 billion,” Garcia said.

He added that the Comelec will also need to ask for an additional budget for the elections. “The question is, who will we ask for the budget? Is it the Congress?” said Garcia. “We are done [discussing our budget] at the plenary, maybe we can ask the Senate.”

READ: BARMM parliamentary polls reset anew to March 31, 2026 – Comelec

Candidates will also have to file their certificates of candidacy again given the upcoming law on redistricting. Based on a “very conservative” computation, Garcia said the filing may be held in January next year, but noted that it will also depend on when a new districting law will be passed by the BTA.

“Those who filed their candidacies on Nov. 4 to 9, 2024, are no longer the candidates in the new districting law. Therefore, we need to set another [date for the] filing of candidacy,” the Comelec chief said.

Because of this, Garcia lamented that the Comelec will have to wait for the new law until it can create its final list of candidates, pushing back the reconfiguration of the vote-counting machines and the conduct of the voters’ education campaign in the Bangsamoro.

“While we are waiting for a new law, all materials that have been deployed in various provinces of the Bangsamoro need to be returned,” Garcia said. “Materials such as indelible ink, batteries, etc., ballots, we need to bring all of it back, and all of these, what we call reverse logistics, need to happen before the end of November.”

“Technically, it turns out that our preparations will only span three months,” Garcia said, although he assured that the Comelec “will definitely comply” with the directive of the Supreme Court.

“We will issue a resolution until tomorrow to set aside all preparations, all calendar of activities pertaining to Oct. 13… subject to modification because we are going to issue a modified calendar of activities in relation to the elections on March 31,” Garcia said. /mr