THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) still has over two years before the next electoral exercise, but it should now start cleansing the padded voters’ list of at least two million double registrations, according to Sen. Loren Legarda.

“There should be no excuses why the voters’ list can’t be purged of these double registrations,” she said after noting that a Comelec official recently admitted that the poll body was having difficulty correcting the double listings.

In a statement, Legarda asserted that ensuring the integrity of the voters’ list is the first step toward ensuring the credibility of elections. “All other measures to foil attempts at poll fraud will be for naught if the voters’ list is tainted with double registrations, especially if they number around two million.”

Recalling her unfortunate experience where she protested the result of the 2004 vice presidential election before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, Legarda noted that elections at the national level are often decided by only hundreds of thousands of votes.

“Two million double registrations can translate to two million spurious votes,” she added. “While most double registrations may have been done without malice when voters changed residences, the double listings would provide an avenue to cheat.”

She warned that “with a padded voters’ list, unscrupulous election officers will have votes to sell to the highest bidders or, at the very least, leave the door wide open for flying voters.”

Legarda insisted that the Comelec must purge double registrations, whether by filing individual exclusion petitions in courts or by any other legal means that would cleanse the voters’ list without disfranchising voters.

But the Comelec director for the National Capital Region (NCR), Ferdinand Rafanan, admitted that the poll body does not have enough manpower to file and attend hearings for exclusion petitions. He said the second option, for Comelec to issue a blanket cancellation of the “second and subsequent registrations,” may impede a citizen’s right to vote, thus the need for case-to-case petitions.

Legarda cautioned, however, that even if a blanket cancellation by the Comelec has basis, the paramount concern with such a move is the possible disfranchisement of voters.

This was why she suggested that with two-and-a-half years left before the next election, “the Comelec should at least try to file the petitions instead of saying it can’t be done.” A blanket Comelec cancellation of second or subsequent registrations would effectively disfranchise voters who changed residences, though it may weed out flying voters, she pointed out.

MAKATI Mayor and United Opposition (Uno) president Jejomar Binay said Tuesday the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) should instead investigate Armed Forces chief Gen. Hermogenes Esperon, after the latter admitted receiving advance intelligence reports about the walkout at the Makati court and the takeover of Manila Peninsula by the group led by Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV and Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim.

ZAMBOANGA CITY—Troops from the military’s Western Mindanao Command (Wesmincom) joined in the manhunt for the recapture of fugitive Marine Capt. Nicanor Faeldon, who slipped from a police cordon at the height of the siege of Manila Peninsula Hotel in Makati City, the country’s business capital.

DETAINED Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV may finally get his wish to attend a Senate hearing, thanks to fellow Sen. Miriam Santiago who introduced a resolution asking the ethics committee to “punish” the failed Oakwood mutiny leader for instigating another attempted uprising at the Peninsula Manila Hotel in Makati last Thursday.

THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) still has over two years before the next electoral exercise, but it should now start cleansing the padded voters’ list of at least two million double registrations, according to Sen. Loren Legarda.

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY—The League of Cities in the Philippines (LCP) has asked the Supreme Court (SC) to look into the legality of the formation of 16 new cities throughout the country.

IT’S a double whammy for lawyer Roel Pulido.

Less than two weeks after the House justice committee laid to rest Pulido’s impeachment complaint against President Arroyo, the House ethics committee junked his other complaint against Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. in connection with his alleged role in the approval of a franchise of a broadband company owned by his son, Jose III.

THE banks may go beyond the permissible limit—50 percent with government debt papers—that a portion of their capital may be backed by peso-denominated IOUs of government. There is, however, a condition.

The United States will forever be an ally of the Philippines and it would never support any move to change the government through any other means other than what was prescribed in the Constitution, US Ambassador Kristie Kenney said on Tuesday.