All the 82,200 Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) units that will be used in the May 10, 2010 automated elections will be completed this Saturday with the arrival of the remaining 13,580 voting machines from China.

Commission on Elections (Comelec) Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal said the first batch of 7,200 PCOS units will arrive at 6 a.m. this Saturday, with the second batch of 6,380 machines arriving at 7 a.m.

“This will be the last,” said Larrazabal.

It was recalled that the Comelec set the deadline of the delivery of the PCOS on February 28.

Upon arrival, the PCOS units will be brought to the Smartmatic-TIM warehouse in Cabuyao, Laguna, where the rest of the units are stored.

Meanwhile, Lakas Kampi CMD presidential candidate Gilberto “Gibo” Teodoro Jr. on Friday said he will not hesitate to join another “People Power” in the event of failure in the country’s first automated elections.

Answering questions from students of the University of Perpetual Help in Las Piñas, Teodoro said that he will join the protest march of the citizenry in the event of failure of elections only when “national level” of the political exercise is already affected.

“Hindi ko sila bibiguin (I will not abandon them). It is the right of every Filipino to express their opinion,” Teodoro told the students during a forum.

However, Teodoro said that the police and military forces should not be lured in the protest actions if ever the Commission on Elections (Comelec) will encounter major problems that will lea d to failure of elections on the national scale.

Even during his two-year term as defense secretary, Gibo has been advocating the policy of insulating the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) to prevent them in engaging in many form of military adventurism.

Earlier, Teodoro asked Comelec officials to prepare a contingency plan in the event of failure on the automated voting and counting system so as not to erode the credibility of the May 10 polls.

At the Liberal Party (LP) front, standard-bearer Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III said he is still optimistic about the first-ever nationwide automated elections although “there are still a lot of concerns and issues that need to be addressed.”

Aquino made the statement after one of his backers, a well-known US-based industrialist, expressed fears that the automated elections would fail and that it would be better if the country revert to manual type of elections.

“I have not yet given up on poll automation but still there are a lot of concerns and we’re still awaiting certain rulings by the Commission on Elections and we’ll respond and inform them of our concerns,” Aquino said in an interview.

According to the senator from Tarlac members of the PiNOY Lawyers, an all-volunteer group of lawyers who have banded together to act as the principal legal arm of the Noynoy Aquino-Mar Roxas tandem in the coming elections, recently underwent a seminar on automated elections.

Aquino said they have returned to their respective provinces to be able to start conducting seminars themselves for other volunteer lawyers.

“Of course, I want to give Comelec the trust and ample time for them to effectively implement the automation program. Unfortunately it is totally new so there are a lot of apprehensions,” Aquino said.

Earlier, Loida Nicolas-Lewis, a New York-based industrialist and an active leader of the Filipino community in the United States, said that if the election is so important “let us go back to manual and then leave it to 2013 by that time everybody will know how to operate the machines.”

Lewis is also the organizer of the US Pinoys for Noynoy (Aquino)-Mar (Roxas) Movement (USP4NM). (With reports from Aris Ilagan and Roy Mabasa)