The Senate presidency

ENQUIRY
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

The Senate presidency
Sunday, 07 11, 2010

Except for the occasional upset stomach, there seems to be nothing wrong with the health of the new President. The new vice president, too, is obviously hale and hearty, especially now that he’s not going to have rashes because he’s moving to the Coconut Palace. So the talk of a yet to be elected Senate president eventually succeeding to the presidency is a long shot—nay, impossibility—within the next six years of the Aquino administration.

What is important here and now is the issue of qualification and acceptability. Can the next Senate president succeed in maneuvering with skill and care the expected internecine dissensions of our present crop of senators as they discharge their role in nation building, pursue an agenda of reform and change, at the same time uphold the independence of the chamber?

This ability to keep things on an even keel should be the primary consideration in the determination of who should lead the Senate in the Fifteenth Congress.

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Closeness to the President of the country is a disqualifier. A senator who himself admits to having asked the permission and blessing of President Aquino to run for Senate president only betrays his dependency on the President. Notice the word: dependency, as in a need for an authority figure so strong that it becomes necessary to have this figure prompting and guiding one in order to function properly.

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And I fear what would happen if the relationship turns into a co-dependency. Political analyst Leina de Legazpi says, “Surely, we’ll have a pattern of detrimental executive-legislative interactions within a dysfunctional political relationship.” Or as one senator succinctly points out, “If you have a Senate controlled by Aquino, where is the [expletive muffled] independence?”

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Tough talk makes a good campaign pitch. So the chosen candidate of the Liberal Party (LP) for Senate president says he will constitute an “activist” Senate, one that “seeks solutions to the nation's decades-old ills.” But these words are mere sound and fury, cock-and-bull, when measured against past performance.

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For instance, can a senator do well as Senate president and truly lead a Senate of the people, when he had been responsible for foisting on the nation a bogus president when he just smugly noted the massive fraud in a previous electoral exercise?

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May a senator, who has contributed nothing significant in the various investigations in aid of legislation conducted by the Senate, be expected to be an activist leader of a Senate that is transparent and accessible to our countrymen?

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May a senator responsible for squelching many activist initiatives of the Senate—for instance, the pursuit of criminal action against those responsible for the forgery of documents in the National Archives to question the citizenship of a presidential candidate—be expected, like the anecdotal tiger, to change his predatory stripes and now maneuver the Senate to take a different tack in similar situations confronting it?

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May a senator who, because of his immaturity and lack of anything between his ears, dawdled and dallied and did not have any significant part in the harvest of legislative initiatives contributory to education upgrading, poverty alleviation, peacebuilding, etcetera, have the expertise and gravitas to claim that the Senate under his leadership would be productive at all?

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The nation needs a Senate president like this like it needs a hole in the head.

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What the nation needs is an independent reformist Senate. It is the only institution that can stand up to the other institutions of government. No institution could effectively perform a check-and-balance function other than the Senate.

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And at the helm of the Senate must be an intelligent senator with an independent mind, someone who could ride into the storm with concentration; present with determination a genuine and strategic legislative reform agenda; see things with clarity and foresight; and with calm tenacity, prioritize laws that will propel the country’s growth, create jobs and ensure the delivery of basic social services.

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That’s a tall order, but it fits nicely with what Senator Edgardo Angara said in a recent statement: “For the Senate presidency, we’re looking for someone who will uphold the dignity and independence of the institution, who will lead a reformist agenda and someone who will not just criticize for the sake of criticism. We will pick someone who will act for the higher interest of our country and the Senate as an institution.”

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Way back in the Ninth Congress (1992-1995), Angara led a Senate independent of the Executive. That Senate then was an activist legislature, churning out a host of reform bills signed into law by President Ramos (who belonged to another party), and catapulted the country to new heights, not the least of which was being brought right to the doorsteps of the exclusive club of tiger economies. Despite this legislative-executive rapproachement, Ramos was not spared the knives of the senators probing into the shenanigans in his administration.

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We are now in the Fifteenth Congress, 15 years later. The LP of President Aquino has only 4 members in the Senate. Obviously, they cannot elect a Senate president. If the mood of the voters who elected the 20 other senators not belonging to the LP is to be honored in these people-empowered times (“Kayo ang boss ko”), the choice of Senate president should not be on the behest of Malacañang. The LP should not tamper with that, by bringing the weight of President Aquino or the presumptive closeness of a party member to him.

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Let a non-LP senator be the Senate president. Only with him can the Senate be truly the people’s voice, an effective and productive partner of President Aquino in nation building. Last but best of all, with a non-LP Senate head, the people would have the calm assurance that no quarters will be given to accommodate, or play footsie with, any one in or out of the Executive department who might be tempted to reprise a Jocjoc, a Garci, or a Neri.

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Letter to President Aquino

ENQUIRY
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

Letter to President Aquino
Sunday, 07 04, 2010

Dear President Aquino:

Forgive me for not addressing you by the moniker that millions of Filipinos now seem to have embraced in reference to you. I am referring to the hyphenated P-Noy, a term coined when the incontrovertibility of winning was a clear and present blessing and no longer an arguable proposition. You have campaigned as Noynoy, true. And I could bet that somewhere in our archipelago of 7,700 islands inhabited by 94 million Filipinos, there are still quite a good number who do not know that your full name is Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III.

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You are and always will be Noynoy to millions, and now that you are president what could come easier and smoother to the tongue than P-Noy? Admittedly, if one cares to style your initials in the fashion of that which the press and obsequious staffers referred your predecessor, the P-Noy tag is much better. Could you imagine PBSCA III? Horrific! Or BCA, as in the FVR of President Ramos? Not likely. With P-Noy, the assonance is so euphonious that the term becomes at once a contraction of Pinoy, the popular term which we Filipinos now proudly call ourselves here and abroad. So by clever coinage: P-Noy. P(resident) Noy(noy), the current iteration of the proud Pinoy. P-Noy, President of the Philippines.

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It saddens me sometimes that we Pinoys have arrived at a stage in our culture where addressing people by their formal names is taken as a sign of condescension or snobbishness. “Hey, Cruz, could you see me at my office?” would strike an offended chord in one’s self-esteem, so we go: “Hey, Johnny, could you see me at my office?” There — that’s betterer, as my friend Leina de Legazpi would say; it doesn’t smack of any hint of haughtiness that, our ancestors used to think, characterized the speech of our former imperious, patronizing colonists when they addressed the peasantry.
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Oh, we’d like to be known as a race of smiling people whose very pores are oozing with friendliness on every occasion. So we prefer the familiar to the formal. We become so cloyingly familiar and friendly with our public officials that it becomes de rigueur to address our mayors as Jojo, our undersecretaries as Jocjoc, and our senators as Nene even in instances when the form of address or honorific for the official rank demands it. I can almost imagine it: “Ladies and gentlemen, it is a great honor and privilege for me to introduce…P-Noy!” Or in news bulletins: “P-Noy yesterday announced that it is the foremost duty of his government to lift the nation from poverty through honest and effective governance.” I wonder how we sound to other nations when they hear, or read, about this reverse condescension!

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Or, is it just me who is uneasy about this widespread usage? After all we saw Dwight Eisenhower in the ’50s referred to as Ike and, of recent memory, Corazon Aquino as, in endearing fashion, Cory.
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But P-Noy? Maybe I’ve grown much too plebeian or too philistine in my tastes, but the appellation simply sticks in my throat. I know I’m swimming against the tide here and would probably lose a handful of friends in my profession and in this vocation that currently finds untrammelled expression in The Daily Tribune, but I find the appellation d’origine controlee, as it were, (if we were talking about wines) too heady and difficult or impossible to accept.

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However, the supposedly endearing term has been unleashed and has become a pervasive idiolect, an accepted coinage among those who voted you into office. It is now my fervent hope that someone in Malacañang would write a nicely worded, fine-tuned circular to the members of the working press that the term sounds too contrived (or too jejemon, as our youngsters would say) and an unceasing repetition of it might eventually become a source of continuing annoyance to those in your official family, if not you yourself, Mr. President.

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Having unloaded that silly baggage off my chest, Mr. President, let me tell you that even people in this part of the world, Kyrgyzstan, where I’m writing from, were properly impressed by your inaugural address, even when I had to grope for the right idiom in English to translate to them your forceful Pilipino. Thanks to the WorldWideWeb we were just a mouse-click away from history being made in the Philippines. Later, we watched you on YouTube gamely singing a melodiously tricky song that was aptly titled “Watch What Happens.” And juxtaposing speech to song, they told me: “This president bears watching.”
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Mr. President, we will watch you from now on. Never mind if the first 100 days of your administration is supposed to be a period of grace, a traditional honeymoon, an initial period of intense approval and goodwill accorded to presidents at the start of their jobs. We, the Filipino nation — your boss as you yourself said so — have scarce time to wait and see. Our watch has begun.

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We will watch you because the Filipino people believe in you and you let them hold your outstretched hand.

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We will watch you because the heart of the nation resonate to your campaign battle cry that there is no poverty if the government is graft-free.

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We will watch you because you have promised the beginning of a regime that is not deaf and dumb to the appeals of the people.
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We will watch you not because our eyes are still bedazzled and bewitched by the Cory Magic, but because we are resolved, as you are perhaps equally determined, not to break our hearts or dash our hopes again.

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Yes, Mr. President, we will watch what happens, and we hope that we will be there — as active participant or thankful beneficiary — when it happens.

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Binay: Man of the Moment

ENQUIRY
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

Binay: Man of the Moment
Sunday, 06 13, 2010

Forty-four years ago, in 1966, Jejomar Cabauatan Binay was one of those juvenile, irrepressible, slogan-chanting students who picketed the Manila Hotel and embarrassed the then occupant of Malacanang when they harangued visiting US President Lyndon Johnson with the chant, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” during the Philippines-Indonesia-Malaysia- Thailand Summit Conference.

Forty years later, in 2006, a more grown-up but still irrepressible Binay again embarrassed another occupant of Malacanang, when he barricaded himself inside the Makati City Hall in defiance of a suspension order that was a transparent maneuver of the Palace to distract attention from its own scandals. The stand-off would have sparked an ugly, rebellion among Makati’s poor had not the court issued an injunctive order, thereby preventing the Office of the President from enforcing its suspension order.

Three months ago, Binay was a dark rider on a pale horse - a “maiden,” in the lingo of racehorse owners­ - who, almost unobtrusively, took his place among jockey thoroughbreds, two of them senators of national reknown, at the starting line in the race for the vice-presidential position. Binay was even handicapped by a black propaganda of having played “stud” to some other filly, an issue that was promptly squelched by an honest, manful admission.

Five weeks ago, who would ever think that Binay, who spurred his horse with a leisurely trot, would find his full gallop at the homestretch and outrun the seasoned thoroughbreds?

Who would ever expect that Binay would come this far so soon? Who would ever think that Binay could make that quantum leap from mayor to vice-president, besting the record of his running mate, who had to start as mayor, then get elected as senator, as vice-president, and then president? I did and, obviously, the 14,501,307 who voted for him last May 10.

On January 6, 2008, this co-alumnus from the UP Preparatory School was my Man of the Year 2007 in this space. I wrote about him then, thus:

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“The opposition in 2007 was endlessly mocked by apologists of the administration. as having no leader qualified to sit at Malacañang if and when.. The opposition, as the lackeys of Arroyo delighted in picturing it, was but a ragtag gaggle of ambitious wannabes, each one of whom desperately wanted to lead….I say hogwash to these obsequious statements, which are actually said more in secret awe of the large roster of qualified men and women in the opposition. It betrays more the uneasiness of those in the administration over the tremors that have been rocking the foundations of the Arroyo government….Binay, better by far than most, has kept the flame of the opposition burning since that grand theft of the May 2004 elections. He had effectively shepherded the surly rage of the corps of FPJ supporters who were orphaned by the death of FPJ. He has never wavered in the fight to bring out the truth in the shameful and shameless election of Arroyo….The loyalty of Binay to the cause of the opposition is without question. Ask the man on the street, and he’d probably tell you that Binay moves around in his crusades without any effort to be recognized….By force of his performance and dedication, he is the leader, albeit the dark horse (pun unintended), who could meet head on and buck off Arroyo’s rusty knights.”

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More that the president-elect, Binay is my Man of the Moment. His rise to the vice-presidency is never a tale of the workings of Destiny or a happy result of the death of a beloved. The voters who put him where he is now knew exactly what he stood for. They jumped over party lines and chose one whose heart beats for the poor and underprivileged, from whose ranks he rose. Binay, they felt, knows how to respond to their needs, as he did when he was mayor of Makati.

Indeed, it is no fawning declaration from a resident of that city when he claims that the poor do not get sick in Makati; that the underprivileged could die and be buried in dignity; that people can walk down the streets and feel comparatively safer than they would if they were somewhere else. His performance as a seven-term mayor has transformed the face of Makati, a feat never before attained by any other local executive, whether mayor or governor, in the Philippines. Surely, what he has done to Makati, he can replicate in the whole country.

Binay won because his persona best exemplifies the way the opposition against the Arroyo government should comport itself once it assumes the seat of power. Second, Binay has the distinction of having ingrained himself deeply in the psyche of every Filipino who longs for good governance. Third, his influence on the course our country is taking is the consequence of his own ingenuous - or ever ingenious - acts of asserting his will over people and events. And, fourth, he has defined the mores of contemporary society or, at least, provoked the nation into some soul searching.

Having reached this far, Binay is now the right man for the Department of Interior and Local Government. The reservations of a proprietarial few - yes, there exist people who are determined to keep the president-elect within a circle of close relatives, die-hard friends, classmates and “Mommy’s devotees” - and who think that Binay might use this cabinet post to catapult himself to the presidency in 2016, should be dismissed outright, if the incoming administration is genuinely committed to good governance and sincere on its promises to the people.
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Binay has the B - for balls, to be very frank about it - to deliver and usher in a new climate of good governance, after nine years of a nightmarish descent into hell. And he’ll do it without any bulls**t.

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Lowered House

ENQUIRY
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

Lowered House
Sunday, 06 06, 2010

The failure of the House of Representatives to ratify - before it adjourned sine die last Friday – the bicameral conference committee report on the disagreeing provisions of the Freedom of Information (FOI) bills of the Senate and the House, respectively, is a betrayal of the public trust.

The Right to Know. Right Now! Coalition, of which Transparency International (Philippines) is a member, branded as doublespeak the claim of Speaker Prospero Nograles that he did his best to get the report on the FOI ratified. At the Kapihan sa Sulo yesterday, lawyer Nepomuceno Malaluan, coalition spokesperson, said that even as Nograles publicly professed support for the ratification of the report, there were numerous acts by the House leadership that betrays its determined resistance to secure the ratification.

The Senate had already ratified the report on the FOI in February of this year. Yet, Nograles found every reason not to have the same report ratified by the House of Representatives. On February 2, 2010, copies of the report were distributed to the members of the House, but the members of the House mysteriously went missing at the session hall when it was calendared for ratification. Again, on February 3, 2010, the House adopted or concurred with no less than 15 Senate bills, and ratified one conference committee report. However, the report on the FOI was conveniently left out. On May 24, 2010, Nograles implored the proponents of the bill to withdraw their motion to ratify the conference committee report, and committed to include it in the agenda of the House on May 31, 2010. May 31, 2010 came and went without any action on the report.

Then, on June 4, 2010, after succeeding in convincing Representative Benny Abante, sponsor of the report, to deliver a manifestation on the prospective application of the FOI, obviously to shield some officials in the outgoing administration from any criminal action, Nograles, in a supreme act of betrayal, instead opened and closed the session, blitzkrieg style, and muzzled and gagged the proponents of the bill by turning off the microphones in the session hall, and invoking a quorum call which was unnecessary (or waived) in cases of ratification of conference committee reports.

Abante, CIBAC representative Joel Villanueva, and their colleagues in the House held on to the promise of Nograles to get this important piece of legislation enacted into law, one that has been introduced and re-introduced since 1987 to put flesh to the “right of the people to information on matters of public concern” under Section 7, Article 3 of the Constitution. They kept faith that Nograles will be capable of rising to the challenge of a Constitutional duty. Instead, they were betrayed. The betrayal was carried on national television, gaining for the House of Representatives a new name as the Lowered House, with Nograles as the ringleader of the conspiracy to kill the FOI bill.

This latest act of betrayal of the public trust by Nograles is not surprising to many. Nograles, who will be leaving (thankfully) the august halls of the House of Representatives on June 30, lost his chance at redemption. He will carry that tag that he presided over the affairs of the Lowered House on June 4, 2010.

The Right to Know. Right Now! Coalition will now have to wait for the Fifteenth Congress to tackle anew the bills calling for the enactment of a Freedom of Information Act. A special session of the Fourteenth Congress to tackle the report on the FOI is out of the question: how can anyone expect the principal beneficiary of its non-enactment call for a special session! Common, Cas Navarro, tell that to Sammy Martin, who told me yesterday that he came upon a white envelope with one thousand peso bills bundled about an inch thick left behind on the desk of a member of the House who was conveniently absent when the quorum was being determined. [But that is another story, or is it?]

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In the Fifteenth Congress, it would do well to put a clamp on the tyranny of the Speaker of the House of Representatives to dictate when a conference committee report should be submitted for ratification. How about an amendment to the Rules of the House in this regard, thus: “Consideration of a bicameral conference committee report on the disagreeing provisions of bills shall always be in order; provided, that such report shall be submitted to the House within five (5) days from the date of the report; provided further, that in case the report is not ratified by the House for any reason within the period of five days from the date of the report, the report shall be deemed ratified nonetheless.” Representative Erin Tanada, who has labored long on the enactment of a Freedom of Information Act, promised to introduce this amendment.

The Right to Know. Right Now! Coalition has vowed to take the campaign to an even higher level. The coalition said that it is not only the right to information that Nograles succeeded in killing, but his word of honor, integrity and leadership. He may have delayed the enactment of the Freedom of Information Act, but he has not defeated it at all. The coalition says that the right to information springs forth from sovereignty that resides in the people; it will endure.

Now, pending the enactment of the Freedom of Information Act by the Congress of the Philippines, we hope that the incoming administration will see to the immediate issuance of an executive order that will govern the access to official records and to documents and papers pertaining to official acts, transactions, decisions, as well as to government research data used as basis for policy development.

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No-el and No-proc?

ENQUIRY
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

No-el and No-proc?
Sunday, 05 29, 2010

Elections were actually held on May 10, 2010, but a grave and inexcusable error on the part of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) may put to waste that exercise - as if no elections were held at all and, therefore, we may have to go back to the polling precincts and vote all over again.

A voter verification feature in the counting machine would have shown the voter if his choices were correctly registered, but the Comelec disabled this feature. That feature, required under the law, was designed to warn voters of errors made by the machines on election day. Simply put, the voter should have been given proof that his vote was properly counted, that is, the machine read his ballot exactly the way the voter made his choices when he marked the “bilog na hugis itlog.” But the Comelec, instead of implementing this mandatory requirement, disregarded it; rather, “repealed it, usurping the power of Congress,” as my friend Leina de Legazpi correctly pointed out.

If we are to follow the precedent set in Germany last March 3, 2009 regarding electronic voting, then we could see the 51 million voters trooping back to the polls after the nullification of the results of the May 10 elections. Let’s ask former Senator Kit Tatad why this could be the result of the Comelec’s grave and inexcusable error.

At the Kapihan sa Sulo yesterday, Tatad came out with his paper entitled “A Proposal to Nullify the May 10 Elections.” Tatad noted that “in 2009 in Germany, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled electronic voting was unconstitutional. The court held that the voting machine does not make it possible for the voter or the voting board to reliably examine, when the vote is cast, whether it has been recorded in an unadulterated manner, or whether when transmitted it has been accurately transmitted in its unadulterated form. Democratic elections, the court pointed out, are democratic only when they retain their public character. That is to say, when the public, beginning with the voter, can see and authenticate every essential step of the election without need of special expertise.”

The Comelec disregarded the provision regarding the observance of an audited paper verification system, which was originally in place when the public tested the machines. Tatad added: “By disabling the voter’s verification mechanism, the Comelec made the voter completely blind to what the machine did to his ballot after he had put it in. Thus, no voter who voted last May 10, from the President of the Philippines to the lowliest individual could state for a fact that she or he knew that the machine had read her or his vote right. This totally voids the voting.”

IT expert Roberto Verzola describes it accurately, thus: “Under the old system, candidates and voters could see how their votes were counted one vote at a time. This is living democracy, when citizens are active witnesses and participants in the counting of votes that will select their leaders. We lost this democratic process under automated lections, which give us no idea if the machines counted our votes correctly. Excluding candidates and voters from the counting of the votes is actually a big step backward in electoral democracy.”

The German Federal Constitutional Court decided last year that electronic voting is unconstitutional. The Court ruled that the use of the electronic machines contradicts the public nature of elections

The use of electronic voting in Germany was challenged on the ground that “the system was not transparent because the voter could not check what actually happened to his vote, being actually asked to blindly trust the technology.” It was established that the voting machines do not print out receipts similar to those what Comelec and Smartmatic-TIM should have provided every voter in the May 10 elections. It was claimed in Germany, as it is now in the Philippines, that the results could be manipulated because of the absence of any verification feature.

In the article “No E-Voting in Germany” on March 11, 2009 of the European Digital Rights (EDRi) - an international non-profit association committed to defend civil rights in the information society - it was reported that the Court “ruled that the Federal Voting Machines Ordinance having introduced e-voting was unconstitutional because it did not "ensure that only such voting machines are permitted and used which meet the constitutional requirements of the principle of the public nature of elections."

It was pointed out by EDRi that “the court considered that, differently from the traditional voting system where manipulations and frauds are much more difficult involving a high degree of effort and a high risk of detection, "programming errors in the software or deliberate electoral fraud committed by manipulating the software of electronic voting machines can be recognised only with difficulty." Also, in the court's opinion, the electors should be able to verify how their vote is recorded without having to possess detailed computer knowledge. "If the election result is determined through computer-controlled processing of the votes stored in an electronic memory, it is not sufficient if merely the result of the calculation process carried out in the voting machine can be taken note of by means of a summarising printout or an electronic display."

Now, Tatad said he would ask the Supreme Court to nullify the May 10 elections. Fully convinced the elections were rigged on account, among others, of the absolute inability of the voter to know how his vote was counted and whether or not his vote, even if correctly counted, was transmitted accurately, Tatad said he will seek the nullification of the results because the process was unconstitutional in this regard.

That should put those trooping to Times Street to think twice about depositing their polished CVs. Not yet, not now, Ding, Dong, Ping, Pong. And to the infotech-challenged Koala bears, happy and lucrative days could be here again.

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Why is the random audit taking too long?

ENQUIRY
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

Why is the random audit taking too long?
Sunday, 05 16, 2010

It is very alarming.

The random manual audit is taking too long, and the results in those precincts where the audit is already finished are not being made public immediately. Worse, we are told that it will take about a month for the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to come out with the results of the audit.

A precinct audit should only take at most half a day, after which its results should be immediately transmitted to the audit committee and simultaneously made public. Any delay will fuel fears about discrepancies being covered up, and will make the audit process less credible.

The random manual audit is the only remaining chance we have to determine the error rate of the PCOS machines that counted the votes on May 10, 2010. Without knowing the error rate, we will never know how trustworthy the machine counts and, by extension, the final outcome of the elections.

At the Kapihan sa Sulo yesterday, Roberto Verzola of the electoral watchdog Halalang Marangal pointed out that with the acceptability of the results of the random manual audit put into serious doubt with the unexplainable delay, the credibility of the outcome of the elections is likely to be questioned.

The random manual audit is the last remaining chance to determine the error rate of the PCOS machines, after the Comelec had taken away the four other possible modes, thus: (1) The results of the Comelec acceptance tests, which should have included tests for machine error rates, remain confidential; (2) The Systest Labs test results, which should also include machine error rates, also remain confidential; (3) A final testing should have established that the machines make zero error when counting the votes in ten ballots. Instead, the machines showed errors so glaring that the Comelec cancelled the tests; and (4) On election day, a voter verification feature in the machine should have shown the voter if his choices were correctly registered, but the Comelec disabled this feature.

Verzola said: “We have no idea at this time of the actual error rates of these machines, because Smartmatic and the Comelec have kept their test data as well as any error rate findings by Systest Lab confidential. Three days before election day, the election inspectors were supposed to do a ten-ballot test, but it was cancelled by the Comelec due to an alleged memory configuration, and in the general confusion and mad rush to reconfigure the machines in time for May 10, we have no idea whether every machine went through the test and passed it with zero errors. Also, the Comelec disabled the machine’s voter verification feature, which would have warned voters of errors made by the machines on election day. Finally, the results of the random manual audit are either delayed or are not being made public.”

We do not know yet the actual error rates of the PCOS machines. If the error rates are too high, the PCOS machine results will be useless in resolving very close contests, like in the race for the vice-presidency.

The May 10 elections were held using PCOS machines whose error rates have not been made public. Today, six days after the elections, we still have no idea of the error rates of these machines.

Yet, the Comelec has been prematurely proclaiming winners based on the results issued by these unaudited machines, without waiting for the audit findings. We are only a few days past the May 10 elections and the terms of office of outgoing officials end on June 30, 2010 yet. Why the rush?

Instead of enhancing its credibility, the audit committee has been undermining it.

By announcing the precincts to be audited at noon time of election day, forewarning cheats who could then immediately order their field operators to stay away from those precincts. Also, it is taking a long time to finish the audit, devaluing the audit for each day of delay, because cheats get an increasing chance to influence the audit results. And by not immediately making public the results from the finished precinct audits, the Comelec is only engendering the worst fear of the electorate that a cover up is being put in place.

The Comelec should make public the audit results as soon as they become available, and to finish the audit as soon as possible. Comelec should not rush the proclamation of machine winners until after the audit and the issues arising from the discrepancies it finds have been fully resolved.

Similarly, the Senate and the House of Representatives, convened as a national canvassing board for the presidential and vice-presidential elections, should seriously consider the import of the results of the manual audit - not simply note them – and go beyond the certificates of canvass submitted.

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Given the gross errors showed by the PCOS machines in field testing days before election day, and the expanding list of errors discovered on and after election day, expect losing candidates to question the results and demand a recount. And we cannot blame them. For the Comelec to insist on proclaiming based on the results generated by the machines whose credibility has been shattered does not make sense.

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Plans are moving along

ENQUIRY
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

Plans are moving along
Sunday, 05 09, 2010

In the closing chapter of Terminal Four, a novel by vice-presidential candidate Jun Yasay, there is a scene that eerily comes close to reality vis-à-vis the alarm and foreboding that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) is causing today. The book, written yet in July 2009 and published January this year, is described by former Manila Times publisher Alfred dela Rosa as “an intriguing roman à clef about corruption, power grab, love and sex in high places that resonate with recent media headlines and congressional probes.”

The entire book really does deserve a thorough reading, but what concerns us at the moment is the scene in Malacañang where Rick Santos, a hotshot lawyer who is a friend of the first gentleman and secret lover of the president, briefs the couple on the Comelec:

“They assure us that the implementation of a new nationwide computerized voting system will be completed on time; that the glitches expected of an untested system will be manageable. The technology revolves around an automated optical scanning system. Some critics claim that it doesn’t provide the transparency required for the counting of votes. These guys say the national electoral results can still be manipulated if expert manpower cannot adequately be provided for the operation of the new machines.”

The President then asks Rick if such manpower exists, and he replies: “To save face, Comelec will insist that it has the full complement of IT experts to oversee the elections and minimize hitches. They will announce that any manipulation of results is virtually impossible with the new system. Even if the opposition thinks otherwise, their objection is focused on a particular type of hardware and software, but not on the concept of an automated process. They know that reverting to the antiquated manual process would be a nightmare that would mainly favor the administration candidates. But since this is an entirely new system” - Rick paused and smiled like the Cheshire cat - “unexpected glitches are bound to happen.”

“You’re not suggesting that this new automated system is bound to fail, are you?” asked the president.

“It will fail . . . but you, Madam President, will have nothing to do with it. That is Comelec’s sole responsibility. The errors and malfunctions will be such that none of the candidates for president, vice-president and senators can claim any clear victory. With all due respect - and I must be very candid under the circumstances that we’re having this conversation - I foresee that the administration candidate for president will be the weakest contender, because…” Rick paused, as he was met with blank faces.

“The real contest,” Rick continued, “will likely be among the stronger opposition candidates. But our anticipated computerization fiasco will force a declaration of a failure of election in the national elective posts. And it will be impossible to hold special elections for these positions before June 30. The melee that will ensue will seriously threaten the peace and stability of the nation. In that event the President - Rick looked at the president in the eye - “will be compelled to use her emergency powers, including resort to martial rule, to curtail violence and chaos.”

I hope for our sakes that Yasay was just engaging in speculative fiction, but the nightmare he has described is unfolding too close to reality. In such a case, we have to be afraid, be very, very afraid.

With just a day left before the national elections, the Comelec seems unperturbed that the precinct count optical scan machines (PCOS or PEKEs, as they are now being called) have not worked during dry runs conducted in Quezon City, Batangas, Mindoro, Pateros, and everywhere. The Comelec is not even flustered that some 76,000 reconfigured compact flash cards needed to set aright the operation of the PEKEs have yet to be shipped and installed throughout the country.

“Plans are moving along, even better than expected,” says the Comelec. This said with an air of smugness, without batting an eye, and a trace of guilt. Where I come from, “better than expected” means 121-percent accomplishment, with lots of time to spare for resolving glitches, screw-ups and plain stupidities that have not been factored in in the timetable for project execution.

Anak ng PCOS! It’s been the same song, the same assurance, that the public has heard, that I’m sure if these Comelec guys sang this self-congratulatory excuse to the tune of “My Way,” they’d have been shot many times over by irate voters

The Comelec has had enough time since it inked a contract with Smartmatic and TIM, and up to now neither Comelec nor Smartmatic-TIM have divulged for public knowledge the nature and security features of the hardware to be used in the elections; the source code of the software, for review by interested parties; the terms and protocols of a random manual audit, and certification from the technical evaluation committee that the automated system is fully functional and a continuity plan is in place.

Instead, what we have is the song-and-dance that “plans are moving along, better than expected.” Is the mismatch between the PCOS configuration and the ballot configuration, resulting in unread votes, better than expected? If you ask me, that’s computerized dagdag-bawas, a digital Garci! Or is Murphy’s Law (“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”) the operative procedure and convenient scapegoat here?

Hey, Comelec, what gives? Are you not bothered by the frightful prospect of a failure of elections where an enraged nation holds you accountable?

But wait…maybe, just maybe, what had been happening - the machine glitches, the waiving of security marks and signatures in the ballots, the soft treatment Smartmatic had been given - are parts of a more sinister plan that is moving along to attain its demonic completion tomorrow.

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