Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Jose A.R. Melo expressed confidence on Wednesday that the Supreme Court will uphold the legality of the P7.2 billion contract for the automation of the May 10, 2010, presidential, congressional, local and party-list polls.

Melo, saying that the Comelec fared well in yesterday’s oral arguments in the High Court on the P7.2-billion poll automation contract, said automation will definitely speed up the election process, with the precinct level count done within hours and the results known also in hours.

“We will see an electoral exercise unprecedented in the rapidity within which the people will know who the winners will be,” Melo said.

With automation, Melo said the country will be breaking all sorts of records and defying all sorts of gloomy predictions about the continuing vibrancy and viability of the electoral process.

“But to make the 2010 elections become truly something for the record books, political players, the The Commission on Elections (Comelec) proclaimed on Wednesday another sectoral organization, Ang Laban ng Indiginong Filipino (ALIF), as one of the winners in the May 14, 2007 elections entitled to a seat in the House of Representatives under Republic Act 7941 or An Act Providing for the Election of Party-List Representatives Through the Party-List System.

The Comelec, reconvening as the National Board of Canvassers (NBC) more than two years after the last national and local elections, said in a resolution that ALIF garnered a total of 229,261, enough to entitle it to seat in the House of Representatives under RA 7941 based on the April 21, 2009 decision of the Supreme Court declaring unconstitutional the two percent threshold votes in the distribution of additional party-list congressional representations.

ALIF No. 1 nominee, Acmad M. Tomawis, will immediately assume his party-list position so as not to further prolong the non-representation of marginalized indigenous Filipinos in the House of Representatives for more than two years now, his legal counsel, Francisco B. Sibayan said. “Very little time is left for Tomawis to represent this marginalized sector. He has to work double time and overtime to catch on his legislative work,” Sibayan said.

Tomawis, who belongs to a new breed of Muslim leaders who successfully blended business and politics, thanked the Supreme Court and the Comelec for their decisions that removed the obstacle to the full implementation of Section 5 (2), Article VI of the Constitution which provides that 20 percent of the members of the House of Representatives shall consist of party-list representatives.