Government squanders P22 million for Gloria's queenish Sona

Even as the country is facing the worst ever economic recession in decades, the government is set to spend P22 million for what is supposedly President Arroyo’s last State of the Nation Address on July 27, making it the most pompous and extravagant Sona in Philippine history.

At a press briefing, Speaker Nogie Nograles of Davao City through House secretary general Marilyn Yap bared preparations for the President’s Sona, which includes the extraordinary physical improvement of the Congress building, is almost 65 percent to 70 percent complete.

The building has been undergoing rush renovation for the past three weeks, particularly the second and third floors of the edifice with the flooring’s vinyl tiles replaced at a staggering cost of P20 million.

Yap said the lawmakers’ swivel chairs at the plenary, which are almost 10 years old, will be replaced.

Aside from the cost of the renovation, Yap said the House has allotted an additional P2 million for food, Sona kit, identification cards, transportation for dignitaries, cocktails, security and other miscellaneous expenditures on the day of the Sona.

The House secretary general also bared Speaker Nograles' innovations for the first time, this year’s Sona will break tradition as the House is set to deploy its own Parliamentary Guard or Congressional Honor Guards who will provide arrival and departure honors for the President and other visitors.

In the past Sonas, it was either the Philippine National Police or the Armed Forces of the Philippines that provided Honor Guards for the President.

NPO's missing printing equipments

Missing P17-million National Printing Office poll equipment consisting P10.5M in 2004 polls, P6.5M in 2007 were unaccounted for.

Clean and honest elections next year is already compromised this early, despite the prospect of automated voting after the Commission on Audit (CoA) found P10.5 million worth of poll printing equipment that the National Printing Office (NPO), which is mandated to print election documents (eg. prints ballots, certificates of canvass, election returns, and statements of votes (SOVs), cannot account for.

The CoA report also noted that the NPO is having a hard time reconciling its balances of inventory worth P162.854 million and its Property Plant Equipment (PPE) accounts worth P472.82 million with the physical count conducted on these.

The CoA said the NPO’s inventory committee completed its physical counts on PPE and the agency’s inventories only last Oct. 31, 2008 but still the balances of the physical count and the balances recorded in the NPO books were not reconciled.

They are reports of fabricating election documents abounds particularly after the fraud-marred elections presidential elections in 2004.

The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) reported in 2007 that Arsenio Rasalan, a self-confessed vote-rigger, pointed to former Comelec director and election lawyer Roque Bello as being instrumental in the forgery of election documents in 2004. "In his affidavit, Rasalan said that Bello headed a complex operation to fabricate 10,000 election returns (ERs) and replace them for the ones being kept at the House of Representatives," according to the report.

Election lawyer Sixto Brillantes Jr. also observed the security of the printing of ERs and COCs has been compromised with the involvement of a private sub-contractor printer who allegedly colluded with fraudsters to produce spurious ERs and certificates of canvass (CoCs).