13, 16 and 19 August 2019 by Karol Ilagan (former Money Trail trainee London 2018)

A billion-peso blunder: 6 in 10 machines to verify voters not used at all. Avoidable delays in the procurement of goods and services; the election calendar revised four times. Sound procurement processes apparently are not a high priority for the Commission on Elections (Comelec). The poll body had a backstory in an audit report the year prior. It continues to pay monthly rental for warehouse services without a valid contract. It has an overstock of paper clips, bond paper, and spiral notebooks that had been exposed to rain, and then left to rot and decay. By the next elections in May 2022, when the national and local elections are scheduled, Comelec will be run entirely by President Rodrigo R. Duterte’s appointees.

Please read the full articles on the website of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), amongst others, here, here and here