2016 polls can’t pass integrity test

Exactly a week and a day ago, the Filipino nation trooped to their respective polling precincts to cast their votes for their favorite presidential, vice presidential, senatorial, gubernatorial, mayoral and provincial and municipal and city board or city council members… and by now, with the supposedly Automated Election System (AES) the counting should be over and done with. But something has gone terribly wrong somewhere.

If you read the Inquirer headlines last Friday it blared, “No Poll Fraud - Comelec” then take a good look at the headlines of The Philippine STAR last Saturday which blared, “Comelec Exec Seeks Probe of Smartmatic.” Then the Star’s headlines yesterday read, “Quick Count Tally for VP Passes Anomaly tests.” To the ordinary man on the street, these headlines tend to confuse our people. But the reality on the ground is the 2016 national elections cannot pass any integrity test… more so that there was a report in the STAR’s frontpage, which read, “Palace confident of polls integrity.”

Actually that report came from the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) which in my book was just too quick to pass judgment on the integrity of the elections. These people are hoping that the Filipino people would just forget that there was a possible cheating in the last elections and move on. However, thanks to two organizations that warned the Filipino people of possible electronic fraud before the May 9 polls.

First, I’m referring to the Automatic Election System (AES) Watch that issued a public statement on May 5 which was entitled, “Prepare for Worst on May 9, Think Tank Alerts Voters and Candidates.” The article

said, “Is the Comelec dragging the nation to a new round of political uncertainty because of its ill-preparedness in administering the May 9 elections? Many voters refuse to bite Comelec’s claim that it is 100 percent ready for the elections, the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG) said today. The reason, Prof. Bobby M. Tuazon, CenPEG’s director for policy studies, said is that the automated election system (AES) that will run the elections is fraught with dangers and vulnerabilities, with many loose ends remaining unsolved since 2010.” It seems that this statement hit the nail on the head.

Then right after the May 9 polls, AES Watch issued this statement entitled, “Game over for Smartmatic; Comelec should be made to account.” Let me reprint

excerpts from that statement here. “Amidst the ecstatic jubilation of winners and their followers and the usual congratulations from PPCRV and some foreign observers, all is not well with the re-designed and uncertified poll automation system for 2016.

“The pressures and noise put up by the vigilance of watchdogs, expert observers and the critical public over pre-election and election day system non-compliances or violations of law by Comelec and Smartmatic that exposed the vulnerabilities for cheating of the re-designed and uncertified poll automation system for 2016 – actual hacking, mismatched results, candidates’ names missing, VCMs in undisclosed areas, unexpurgated voters’ list and the No Biometrics, No Vote rule; discrepancies between voter intent and VVPAT/ voter receipt; questionable transmission rule on physical importation of all SD cards from the VCMs to the canvassing centers to qualify for electronic transmission, no replacement ballots and VCMs, among others, repeated and in a more widespread scale, the glitches and uncertainties of the old PCOS in 2010 and 2013.”

The other organization who warned the Filipino nation of a possible electronic dagdag bawas is the National Transformation Council (NTC) that issued an official statement last April 29 and we wrote this in this corner last May 3. Let me reprint the first parts of this NTC statement, “On May 9, 2016, we are mandated to elect new leaders of our government. But for the first time in our history, growing signs of an emerging failure of elections tend to outweigh our hopes for their peaceful and orderly conduct and favorable results. Consider the following:

First, the voters’ list has been hacked. This has been called the greatest hacking in our digital age. But the hackers’ crime against the Commission on Elections is overshadowed by a far more grievous crime against our people – the deliberate padding of the voters’ list, from the officially declared total of 54.3 million voters to 70 million voters.

Those responsible for this must go to jail. But not even this can allow the elections to simply continue. Why not? Because the Comelec has only one official voters’ list. And that list has been corrupted. Without an uncorrupted voters’ list, there can be no clean, honest, transparent and credible elections.”

So do we take the word of the Comelec hook, line and sinker, more so that it has an unholy alliance with a foreign company called Smartmatic? I just can’t get over the fact that in this recent squabble between Comelec’s Rowena Guanzon and Smartmatic officials, no one is alarmed that we have foreigners or mercenaries in charge of our voting systems. It should stop!