SHOOTING STRAIGHT
By Bobit S. Avila
March 19, 2012 | Opinion
Last Friday, I was in
the midst of a very important meeting when a friend interrupted our meeting to
show us a texted report that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) finally
approved the purchase of the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines. My meeting had nothing to do with politics,
yet a report like that was shocking enough for us in Cebu because of the incident
that happened in the town of Compostela, 25 kilometers North of Cebu City where
they didn’t have any town officials for 22 months, thanks to the PCOS machines
that doesn’t know now to count!
But in truth, the
Comelec decided to re-proclaim Mayor Joel QuiΓ±o despite the request of
complainant Richie Wagas to open the ballot boxes to prevent more
embarrassment. Opening the ballot boxes
would have revealed that what’s inside the ballot boxes would not match with
what the PCOS machines reported. This is
the same in all the electoral protests in the 2010 polls.
If indeed our Comelec
officials want to ferret out the truth… they should have agreed to open the
ballot boxes… but they did not because it would prove what we’ve been saying
all along… that the PCOS machine doesn’t know how to count and worse as I
mentioned the other week, the group called Tanggulang Demokrasya has already
collated more than enough evidence all over the country on how the use of
Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines operated by Smartmatic has resulted
in a massive electoral failure for the 2010 elections. We told you so, but you didn’t listen!
But our self-righteous Comelec
officials are focusing on the 2004 and 2007 electoral fraud and are in complete
denial that fraud also marred the 2010 elections because the Smartmatic
machines were compromised and the digital signature removed which was one of
the safeguards that our lawmakers put in place. But Comelec arrogantly removed these
safeguards and ended up with so many electoral disputes all over the country.
Didn’t we say that the
biggest problem in this sick country of ours is that we don’t fix our problems?
Our best proof is this decision by the
Comelec to purchase those defective PCOS machines despite its numerous
problems. Mind you, nations like
Germany, France and India have already come up with laws banning the use of
digital counting machines because they have been burned already. But we Filipinos are so stupid… we’re doomed
to repeat the mistakes of the past because we do not remember our history.
Meanwhile despite public denials from Malacanang, the rumors that President
Aquino visited Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) spiritual leader Eduardo V. Manalo with
his sisters continue to persist. As we
all heard, the inveterate liars in MalacaΓ±ang would “neither confirm, nor deny”
that this really happened. When
MalacaΓ±ang spokespersons say something, you bet that the opposite is true. Well, I have a very impeccable source that the
meeting really materialized and apparently the President tried to convince the
INC spiritual leader why CJ Corona has to be impeached.
Undoubtedly, it was
P-Noy’s “last ditch” effort to get back the INC to support him again. Pundits believe that the meeting between the
President and the INC was triggered by the massive nationwide INC rally held
last Feb. 28. Although it was only a
prayer rally, there was no question that it had very strong political undertones,
which in a way sent a message not only to P-Noy but to those Senator Judges
seeking re-election that if they convict CJ Corona, they shouldn’t even dare
ask the INC for their votes in the 2013 elections. That’s 3 million votes from the INC.
History has shown that
the mid-term elections would be disastrous for any unpopular President and his
allies in the Senate. With P-Noy getting out of that meeting empty-handed… I have a hunch that the next thing he did was
call upon Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes to get those Smartmatic PCOS
machines right away. They know that
these machines are defective and can be “tweaked” to favor their candidates.
If we don’t stop the
Comelec from using the PCOS machines, its first victim will be the INC because
their block votes would now become irrelevant. Everyone knows that Comelec Chairman
Brillantes is a P-Noy appointee who was lawyering for the Liberal Party… so it
is almost a guarantee that if you’re not with the LP slate in the 2013 polls,
you might as well not run for any position… or perhaps do the better thing
boycott the coming 2013 elections because you already know it’s not going to be
an honest race.
By his own admission,
Brillantes pointed out that Smartmatic was in the process of correcting the
deficiencies of the PCOS machines. This
is the first public admission by a Comelec official that indeed the PCOS
machines could not count. Therefore may
we ask the Comelec chairman what deficiencies were being fixed by Smartmatic
and more importantly, why purchase those defective machines in the first place?
It’s getting curiouser everyday!
* * *
For e-mail responses to
this article, write to vsbobita@mo-pzcom.comor vsbobita@gmail.com. His columns can be accessed through
http://www.philstar.com.
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