There are ifs and more questions unanswered

LETTERS FROM THE AGNO

March L. Fianza

There are qualms that many voters are still looking for acceptable answers to their questions even after elections have passed. Aside from local bets, the senatorial candidates who won were proclaimed minus the actual number of votes they got, which all the more fired up speculations of a not-so-perfect automated voting.

People have the right to know the exact number of votes garnered by the candidates. Contrary to the glitches and failures of 24 per cent of 78,000 (out of 82,000) unlicensed or “pirated” voting machines bought for P1.8B that were unable to transmit poll results, the reported vote-buying and other election violations, the incompetence and indecisiveness of people running the voting precincts; the Comelec chair still wants us to believe that the 2013 elections went on smoothly, was peaceful and orderly – their adjectives often said with the ever-present word “generally.”

What the Comelec meant was that the problems that were encountered in the precincts did not affect the election situation in general and were too “minimal” to change the results. But more than fast elections, what people want to see is that we have credible elections.

The problems that I have personally listed and need answers before another election comes are about the thermal paper spools that got stuck inside the PCOS because they are a little wider for the rollers; and machines that cannot swallow paper ballots with creased edges. There were also problems with CF cards. It was found out that Smartmatic supplied the Comelec with cards that are “rewriteable,” contrary to the Comelec specification for “write once” cards.

Any computer literate person knows that anybody can tamper with the data in cards that are rewriteable. Comelec chair Sixto Brillantes believes these can be fixed, although they were never fixed prior to election day. It seems like Brillantes wants us to forget about the ballot-rejection rate of 25 percent that is equivalent to 24,600 of 82,000 PCOS units, or 13 million of 52 million voters.

There is also the question about how Smartmatic, the supplier of the PCOS machines can sell to Comelec and operate the machines when it was not certified to do so in the first place. Worst, Dominion Voting Systems of Canada, the real PCOS developer, has canceled Smartmatic’s license last year.

The answer of Brillantes to that was “pera-pera lang yan.” Now, after buying the machines, does Comelec again want to pay Dominion for the operating license? An election watchdog says, without the permission from Dominion, the real owner and developer of the PCOS, our government may be blacklisted and branded as the “biggest technology pirate.”

There are more issues that need to be addressed by the Comelec such as the PCOS machines that also accepted wrongly shaded ballots, or the PCOS machines that counted one vote less each for senators and councilors. But instead of answering the questions, we saw on national TV how the Comelec chair has resorted to name-calling his critics.

Instead of addressing pointblank the questions from media, he has been intimidating and challenging his critics. This makes them and the electorate feel that they are being prevented from talking about the problems by the “threats” coming from the chair of a constitutional commission and that they just keep quiet in the middle of errors, malfunctioning of the machines, data inconsistencies, and lately, the bypassing of canvassing rules.

In Manila, a coalition of citizens’ organizations composed of independent election watchdogs, IT experts, academe, NGOs, church, and public administration, political analysts, religious groups and lawyers’ groups have been working for the same orderly and peaceful election objective and know that Brillantes does not have the monopoly in pursuing meaningful electoral reforms.

But people heard on TV that Brillantes has resorted to labeling his critics, which to them is the behavior resorted to by people unable to come up with sane answers to rational and legitimate questions. Twice within the election period, Comelec chair Sixto Brillantes said he would resign. If he is true to his word then this is the time. He should not put conditions to his resignation that he knows would not come anyway.

***

I heard friends say there could have been another election output if re-electionist mayor Morris Domogan and congressman-elect Nick Aliping were not endorsed by a religious bloc days before election time. Many of them spoke in unison saying that with the voting population that Baguio has, businessman Mark Go could have won as congressman while lawyer and former councilor Joe Molintas became mayor… if there was no endorsement from the religious group that claims it can deliver 7,000 to 10,000 votes.

Basing on the number of votes of the candidates and the differences in the votes they garnered, what people and friends say may be true. However, one election observer said in jest that Aliping’s win may not be attributed to the religious endorsement but to musician-singer Conrad Marzan. He came home all the way from California to sing in the campaign sorties of Nick, together with singer-composer Bryan. Thus, Nick’s thousands of supporters were also thankful to Conrad.

In Benguet, that cannot be said. The endorsement by a religious voting block of many candidates, including re-electionists Congressman Ronald M. Cosalan and Gov. Nestor Fongwan, did not give as much visible results because their votes were really the numbers that they have been garnering since, although, the endorsed votes were helpful in giving the bets their leads, the differences between them and their opponents were far.

And what could have been the outcome of things… if congressman Cosalan was not re-elected? Except for mayor Greg Abalos, there were observations that he could have retained his post… if Bobot Fongwan was not endorsed by a religious bloc and “comebacking” mayor Edna Tabanda did not file her candidacy. People in La Trinidad agree that Abalos could have been re-elected… if the mayoralty fight was one-on-one, with either Ading Bobot or manang Edna on the opposite side.

By the way, hours into midnight after polling places closed on May 13, Mayor Abalos called mayor-elect Tabanda and congratulated her. I also called manang Edna to congratulate her and she confirmed that Bobot also called. Digesting what she said on the phone amid a noisy crowd, she seemed to tell me La Trinidad made her win because they saw the two “fighting” boys as her sons. I said to myself maybe that was what she has been telling all along to people in his campaign sorties and caucuses. – marchfianza777@yahoo.com