THE Commission on Appointments yesterday confirmed the appointments of Election Commissioners Maria Norina Casingal and Noil Rafol Pipo, whose terms end on February 2, 2032.
Casingal and Pipo were scheduled for confirmation last week but the CA committee on constitutional commissions and offices decided to defer it due to lack of time.
The CA body also confirmed the appointments of 84 senior officers of the Armed Forces.
During the CA committee on commissions and offices deliberations, Senate deputy minority leader Risa Hontiveros asked the poll officials about the Comelec’s plan on the vote counting machines (VCMs) used in last May’s midterm elections since the government spent around P18 billion for them.
Casingal said the more than 100,000 VCMs used were just leased and the Comelec has to return them by September, but because of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao elections on October 13, she said the commission will have to rent about 7,000 of those machines.
Casingal clarified that the Comelec did not pay the whole P18 billion for renting the VCMs, explaining the sum was the total of their expenditures in the midterm elections last May 12.
“The P18 billion is not only for the machines but for all the expenses for the 2025 NLA (national and local elections), including the payment of our electoral boards and all the paraphernalia, procurement of paraphernalia used for the 2025 NLE,” Casingal said.
Pipo said that for the 2028 elections, the Comelec will have another bidding for the procurement of vote-counting machines.
“We have also discussed the possibility of procuring the machines that we have used already. But it is still in the process of discussion in the commission and BAC (Bids and Awards Committee),” Pipo said.
He was referring to the VCMs from Miru DSystems Co. Ltd, of South Korea.
“The machines which we recently used, your honor, the Miru machines, made in (South) Korea,” he added.
Pipo said the Comelec is also planning to hold a “vendors’ fair” for automated vote-counting machines to be used in the 2028 elections.
He said a similar fair was held in 2023.
After hours of “grilling” by the CA panel members, Senn. Cynthia Villar, CA committee chairman, approved the plenary confirmation of Casingal and Pipo.
The confirmation of Casingal and Pipo was objected to by Duterte Youth party list chairman Ronald Cardema since the commissioners were part of the National Board of Canvassers who decided to suspend the proclamation of the party list group during the May 12 midterm elections due to “serious allegations” against the group.
The members of the CA body still confirmed Casingal and Pipo’s appointments, saying the CA was not the proper venue to bring up Cardema’s grievances, as it is the Comelec that should decide on the proclamation of winners in the last elections.
“It is my submission, we cannot be held hostage in passing upon the confirmation of the appointee, especially if the opposition against him is…predicted to his affiliation to an agency with the oppositor’s claim to be prejudicial to his interest… The credentials of the appointee bear out his qualification and fitness to be appointed as commissioner of the Comelec,” said CA panel member Rep. Roy Loyola.
Casingal replaced Commissioner Socorro Inting, while Pipo took over the vacated post of Marlon Casquejo.
