MANILA, Philippines -- The National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) announced on Sunday plans to mobilize and use privately owned generators in every precinct cluster to ensure that power outages would not disrupt the automated elections on May 10.

An inventory of all power generators in the country was one of the key agenda items in a meeting of council officers and regional directors in Cebu City, said Defense Secretary Norberto Gonzales, who also the NDCC chair.

“We will be asking our people who have generators to register them with the NDCC so we can use them during the elections,” Gonzales said.

He noted that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) already obtained backup generators for the balloting, but the NDCC saw the need to carry out parallel contingency preparations to allay fears of a failure of elections.

“We cannot afford to have a failure of election,” Gonzales said. “The government should exert all efforts to eliminate the possibility of a failure of elections.”

Critics say Gonzales and Gen. Delfin Bangit, the newly appointed chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, are behind a military plan to keep President Macapagal-Arroyo in office if the vote does not result in a new Chief Executive.

Gonzales and Bangit have dismissed the speculation amid concern over the purported inability of election officials to meet targets in preparations for the country’s first nationwide electronic vote.

Both Gonzales and Bangit have vowed to ensure a smooth transition of power when Ms Arroyo’s term ends on June 30.

Gonzales said the NDCC has been working on contingency measures to ensure that blackouts do not occur in Mindanao from May 8 to 12. One of them would be to keep Lake Lanao’s water supply at levels enough to operate the hydropower plants during the election period, he said.

Early this month, Mindanao was placed under a state of calamity due to severe power deficiency as a result of the El Niño phenomenon that has been drying up rivers, lakes and dams.

The power shortage on the island, which is 55-percent dependent on hydropower for electricity, has resulted in eight- to 12-hour brownouts daily.