Daang matuwid derecho sa bangin ang Comelec

BEHIND THE SCENES
Alfred P. Dizon

This Banana Republic is going the way of daangmatuwidderechosabangin this coming May elections with the seeming lack of preparations of the Commission on Elections in ensuring that the polls will he held without hitches.

Disaster is looming, pundits said, but the Comelec, the object of ire and the butt of jokes over the issues, is taking the barbs cavalierly – parangwalalang, according to my bubwit.

If the Comelec cannot institute the proper measures come election time, we may soon be governed by misfits , nincompoops and again, the same corrupt officials. The people will not know if those who are proclaimed were indeed those who won.

Our bubwit says the Comelec announced it will no longer conduct another mock election despite glitches observed during the Feb. 2 mock polls -- for fear of being mocked again. Thick hides or not, according to our rattler, the Comelec is not budging from its position.

Comelec Chairman SixtoBrillantes said the report of the Technical Evaluation Committee (TEC) had already validated the mock polls conducted in 20 voting centers in 10 areas across the country, so there is no need for a repeat of the mock polls.

The glitches include difficulties experienced by the Board of Election Inspectors (BOI) in keying in their pin codes in the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines, rejection of some ballots by the machines and delay in the transmission of election results from the polling precincts to the canvassing centers.

This resulted in calls to go back to the manual system of elections in May.The Comelec, however, argued that this would require the amendment of Republic Act 9369, which mandates the automation of the country’s elections.

With the TEC report, the Comelec has ruled out any chance that the May 13 polls will be done manually despite the absence of a certified source code — a human-readable instruction on how the PCOS machine should function.

Brillantes said the poll body could use the TEC report as a “justification” that the automation of the elections could push through, using the source code certified by Colorado-based independent firm SLI Global Solutions in 2011.

“One argument is that in 2010, we had an election although no one actually saw the source code. Nobody even knew what was inside the Central Bank (where the source code was supposedly kept),” he said.

Brillantes said what is important are the “binaries,” the machine-readable instruction in the PCOS machines.“Manual is already impossible with the certification issued by TEC. We are going to proceed automated no matter what happens. Whether source code is there or not, it is not necessary anymore.”

The TEC, composed of the Comelec, Department of Science and Technology and Commission on Information and Communications Technology, was tasked by Republic Act 9369 to review and certify if the automated election system (AES), including its hardware and software components, is “operating properly, securely, and accurately” in accordance with the provisions of the law.

The assessment shall be based on the successful conduct of a field testing process, followed by a mock election; successful completion of audit on accuracy, functionality and security controls of the AES software and the development, provisioning and operationalization of a continuity plan to cover risks to the AES at all points in the process so that failure of elections — whether at voting, counting or consolidation — may be avoided, among others.

The TEC, in a resolution, noticed the lack of certified source code but ruled that the AES complied with the law in general.

This made the Lower House opposition wary of the poll chief. House Minority Leader and Quezon Rep. Danilo Suarez hit Brillantes for his continued cavalier attitude on the international dispute between Smartmatic, which was contracted by the Comelec to supply the PCOS machines, and Dominion Voting Systems that owns the software to run the equipment.

Suarez said Brillantes has been making useless retorts to the public whenever asked about how he is resolving the quarrel of the two foreign companies.

He said the poll chief threatened at one point to go manual in the counting of votes and did not the face the issue.

Suarez warned Brillantes not to take the issue and the reported glitches lightly. One way or another, the May election will have to proceed. Like we said, it is not farfetched if the will of the people will not be reflected in the voting tallies.

And when everything is over and done, the people will just accept this as a fact of life. Then, it is back to struggling for a living while the crocodiles gobble everything. Then those, who made millions out of those shameless deals, will wink their eyes and shed crocodile tears.

It is no wonder Lolong, the biggest crocodile in the world died due to depression. Word is out he got so sad for being compared with corrupt officials that he opted to die than bear the anguish.