CAGAYAN de Oro City Second District Rep. Rufus Rodriguez has castigated the Commission on Elections (Comelec) for its failure to verify a flurry of reports concerning Miru Systems Co. Ltd.’s incompetence to run automated elections in other countries.
During a meeting of the House Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms on Tuesday, Rodriguez flagged the possibility of a failure of the 2025 midterm polls and a revert to the “dark ages” of manual counting if the many issues hounding Miru’s performance in elections it had handled in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Iraq, among others, are not properly and immediately addressed.
To recall, the Comelec had awarded to Miru the P17.9-billion deal to count votes for next year’s national and local elections.
Rodriguez urged the Comelec to ensure that the most pressing concerns about Miru — which he summed up as alleged “corruption and malfunction” — will not happen in the 2025 election.
However, Rodriguez expressed displeasure upon hearing from Comelec Commissioner Marlon Casquejo that the poll body did not seek more information from other reputable groups which had reported Miru’s failures during elections held in the DRC and Iraq.
While Miru had submitted to the Comelec certifications of a supposedly “satisfactory” performance in these two countries, Rodriguez pointed to reports saying otherwise coming from independent third-party sources, such as the Carter Center, the National Episcopal Conference of Congo and the Church of Christ in Congo in the DRC, as well as the Alliance of Networks and National Organizations for Monitoring Elections in Iraq.
These organizations had found out that 45 percent of polling stations in the DRC had experienced difficulties with Miru’s electronic voting machines.
Meanwhile, 70 percent of voting stations in Iraq did not work, such that the Middle Eastern country had to revert to manual elections.
“We don’t want that to happen to our country,” Rodriguez said.
“The 2025 election should be assured by the Comelec and the contractor [Miru] to be flawless and bring about the results of the people’s will. But we’re reading in accounts and papers the problems of Miru,” the solon lamented.
“The bedrock of our democracy is periodic elections; I’m concerned there may be a possibility of failure of election next year. We should ask from Miru an assurance that what happened in the DRC and Iraq are not true,” he added.
Miru’s representatives, however, did not attend Tuesday’s hearing.
Rodriguez said it would be a “big negligence” on the part of the Comelec if it missed out from the reports of Miru’s “lousy job” in the DRC.
As such, Rodriguez urged the Comelec to get all of the pertinent reports on Miru’s performance in automated elections worldwide.
“Certainly, I can see that they [the Comelec] did not get all the information to make an informed choice that Miru can do a good job counting votes in 2025,” according to Rodriguez.
