‘Talking points’
THE last elections have so demolished so many parties that until now none of them seem to have recovered from their defeat. Of the nine losing presidential candidates, only former national security adviser Norberto B. Gonzales appears to have resurfaced upon his election in Madrid last week as Socialist International’s (SI’s) vice president for the Middle East, Caucasus and Asia-Pacific.
But he has not indicated whether his Philippine Democratic Socialist Party (PDSP) intends to organize even a token opposition to the government.
The administration needs a credible opposition to engage it in rational discourse. Without it, the administration might be tempted to disregard the constitutional properties of a democratic and republican state. It has happened before, it can happen again. Those in power must do their best to resist it.
In Cory Aquino’s time, the opposition was completely washed out. One senator alone — Juan Ponce Enrile — was left standing in the 24-strong Senate; there was nothing to prevent Cory from running a dictatorship, except that she didn’t have the appetite or the mind for it. Under Senate President Jovito Salonga, the senators from her own party had to provide the necessary checks and balances.
Thus in 1991, after the 1947 USPhilippine military bases agreement ended, and she decided to extend the term of the bases by another 10 years, it was the Senate that blocked it.
Today, with only two sitting opposition senators, we need the Senate majority under Migz Zubiri to do what the Salonga-led majority did, whenever needed. But if they cannot do it, we need the nonpartisan mass media and nonpartisan citizen groups to take its place. They have to engage the government constructively on the most important issues. We need them to guide the public with regular “talking points” so that productive discussions could converge around these points, supported by scientific polling and related activities.
The citizens and the media must help to govern the nation by staying close to the heart of the issues.
In the last few days, a small group led by retired brigadier general and former Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) undersecretary Eliseo Rio Jr., former National Citizens Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) chairman Augusto Lagman and former Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines (Finex) president Franklin Ysaac has raised a critical issue related to the last elections.
The group is asking the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to show how its transparency server (TS) was able to count 20 million votes from 7 p.m. to 8:02 p. m. on May 9, 2022, when the vote-counting machines (VCMs) transmitted a much smaller number. Twenty million is a big chunk of the 31.6 million votes that gave President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. the biggest presidential win in the nation’s history. Through lawyer Ricky
Tomotorgo of Naga City, the group is asking the Comelec to provide date/time stamps of the first hour transmissions of all the election returns (ERs) from the VCMs via telcos to the Comelec TS to support the reported 20-million vote transmission.
They are not accusing anyone of anything, but they are asking the Comelec to confirm the accuracy of the transmissions. As against the 20 million votes transmitted during the first hour, only 13.2 million votes were transmitted during the second
hour, from 8 to 9 p.m. “This is the first time in our history that the highest number of votes counted occurred in the first hour,” they said.
During that first hour, all election precincts must comply with certain administrative procedures, foremost of which is the printing of eight copies of the ERs, before transmission can begin. This takes about 30 minutes, so the earliest transmission can be made is at 7:30 p.m. only, not 7 p.m., they said.
However, the group said that a
Comelec graph presented during a forum organized by the Ateneo School of Government on October 18 at Manila’s Sheraton Hotel showed that the transmission peaked two hours after it started, not one hour after the voting closed.
In the same forum, Comelec chairman George Garcia was reported to have said it was the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) — not the Comelec — that made the program converting the TS data dump into more readable files. This was where the 20 million vote count reportedly came from. But the PPCRV has said nothing about it so far.
In a letter to Tomotorgo on Oct. 3, 2022, Comelec executive director Bartolome Sinocruz Jr. said the Comelec could not grant the group’s request for anything related to the May 9 vote count without violating “the secrecy and sanctity of the ballot.” He asked the group to go instead to the Comelec Advisory Council and the joint congressional oversight committee on automated election system for its needed documents.
This seems to be an inexcusable cop-out. What is in issue here is the accuracy of published official data, nothing more. If the group’s statement is correct, what is the explanation for it? If it is not, what is the correct fact? This is all we need to know. But instead of speaking directly to this issue, the Comelec official concerned chose to talk of the secrecy and sanctity of the ballot. Once and for all, someone in authority should set the record straight.