Who is handling Koala boy Robin?

Letters from the Agno
March L. Fianza

“Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” – John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States .

That was then applicable to winners and losers in many elections in the past. But not during the last time or this time when voting was done through an automated election system.

This time, losers gain the support of more sympathizers as Comelec slowly counts and while glitches and other problems on the use of the precinct count optical scan machines or PCOS continue to be reported.

The Comelec estimated that all 1,000 voters, more or less, in a clustered precinct will be able to vote before the PCOS is shut down at 6pm. But in the middle of the day they noticed voters in long lines wanting to cast their votes so that the only safe remedy to their wrong estimate was to extend voting time for another hour.

In precinct 55C of Pico, La Trinidad, it took me two hours to wait in line from 10:30AM to 12:30PM before I was able to cast my vote. I am sure that all those who were on the same line with me also stood there for two hours.

After feeding my ballot to the PCOS machine, its screen showed that there were already 274 votes that were cast – meaning, I was voter number 274.

In other words, from the time the precinct opened at 7AM up to 12:30PM that is equivalent to five hours and thirty minutes, only 274 ballots were fed into the machine. It also means that the rest of the 726 voters will have to share the next five hours and thirty minutes from 12:30PM to 6PM to be able to cast their votes.

It was good though that someone thought of providing an express lane for senior citizen voters, otherwise both young and old would have to be waiting in line.

With that nationwide experience, hundreds of thousands of voters who had other important things to do on election day decided to leave their lines and never came back.

This number was in addition to millions of voters who were disenfranchised and those who failed to vote because their names were misplaced somewhere.

Rep. Manny Pinol in a statement he read in the Batasan committee of Teddy Boy Locsin in last week’s election probe described the PCOS machine as a glamourized counting machine that does not know if the person feeding the ballot is a registered voter in that precinct.

“In fact the voter can just leave the precinct without leaving his thumb mark,” Pinol, a gubernatorial bet in North Cotabato said. The thumb print of every voter is the identifying factor that was supposed to be previously programmed in the machine. This safety measure was removed by Comelec.

Another question that is bugging Comelec and Smartmatic is how they were able to reconfigure all 76,000 Compact Flash Cards in two days after these were unable to transmit correctly during the testing period?

This strengthens public suspicion that the CF cards that had no time to be fixed were the same CF cards that were used during the elections, reason why the results from the precincts did not match the reports after transmission.

But one of the most irritating things is the allegation by a certain Robin of electronic cheating during the automated elections as this was causing delays in the poll body’s work to canvass and proclaim winners.

Comelec commissioners and some congressmen describe Robin, the election fraud whistleblower, as “Koala boy” since he appeared on national TV wearing a mask that made his face look like a Koala bear.

Although possible, the allegations of Robin are unbelievable. But since he does not want to come out openly and prefers to hide his identity under a mask, his objectives or the objectives of his handlers have become questionable.

Robin, the “Koala boy” has narrated his supposed involvement in vote-padding and vote-shaving in favor of the frontrunners in the first automated elections in the country.

But the camp of Noynoy, said the leading Presidential bet may not be the beneficiary of electronic cheating because his votes are indicative and consistent with the results of the pre-election surveys and exit polls.

One thing more, Noynoy is an enemy of the administration. If Robin’s allegations were true, then who should be benefiting from it? Aquino’s camp was confident any election protest against him would not succeed considering the overwhelming votes he received from the people.

What then is the motive of Robin and his handlers? One thing is suspect – to confuse people into thinking that there was indeed widespread cheating during the May 10, 2010 elections to justify a call for a failure of elections.

That is, if the handlers do not get what they want. It could be true that Robin’s managers want to blackmail the incoming administration. Surely, they have the money to spend for such an operation and they have a candidate who stands to lose if their operations fail. – marchfianza777@yahoo.com