Comelec, take this seriously

ENQUIRY
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

Comelec, take this seriously
Sunday, 11 22, 2009

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) could have a big problem in its hands, if these observations of Dan Pinto, a computer maniac — “mitidor” is how he describes himself — prove to be true:

On Oct. 28, 2009, Bev Harris, the board administrator of BlackBoxVoting.org, made this post: “Smartmatic used to be associated with Sequoia in some way, didn’t it? Does anyone know the current status? A Sequoia rep contacted me to complain that we had listed Sequoia as foreign-owned in our anti-trust complaint letter, but when I asked him who DOES own Sequoia, he never answered.”

Now, here’s a question Filipinos might want answered: Isn’t Smartmatic the other half of the joint venture that the Comelec chose to supply the automated election machines for next year’s polls? Smartmatic-TIM has recently said it would hire other logistics and transport firms to deliver the equipment and personnel needed for the May 2010 elections to the country’s various regions.

Note the emphasis on equipment and personnel. I fervently hope that among the automated election machines will not be ones from Sequoia Voting Systems, which have a yellow button at the back. With this particular equipment, all a hacker-voter has to do once inside the booth is kill some time pretending he is having difficulty in choosing his candidates. Then he would reach around the back of the machine where the yellow button is located. Now, here’s the scary part: What if the hacker is part of the personnel that’s supposed to administer the elections? What if it’s an insider? Then we’ll have no use for Garci substitutes, I guess. Anyone could be a Garci for any party he chooses!

Harris goes on to explain:

Anyone who can get at the yellow button can ruin the election. It takes no password, no computer knowledge, no equipment.

Sequoia agreed it could be done, but claimed it would be difficult to do unnoticed (they focused more on voters doing it than the idea of an insider doing it).

Additional steps should be considered, and Sequoia now has joined Diebold as a company that produces provably insecure voting systems that should be recalled. Both the WinEDS central tabulator deployed by Sequoia and the Sequoia touch-screens with the yellow buttons are insecure.

While it may be caught if extra votes are entered using the yellow button hack, which ones would be thrown out if there are too many?

Here is how the “Yellow Button Hack” is done:

1. Go to the back of the voting machine. Press and hold the yellow activate button (about 3 seconds). Release when the screen says “waiting for next voter.”

2. Press and hold the yellow button again until the screen says “change to manual activation?”

3. Touch the “Yes” button on the screen.

4. At that point there will be a message on the screen that says “Manual activate voting enabled” (this is just displayed briefly).

5. Next message will read “Waiting for the next voter” When you see that you touch the message that says “start voting” or “resume voting” located in the lower right of the screen The AVC Edge is now set up for poll worker activation mode.

Here is the sequence:

1. Once you’ve touched the start or resume the “waiting for next voter” appears.

2. Activate the ballot by pressing and releasing the yellow activate button

3. Activate the correct party for the voter and press the yellow activate button using the keypad on the display screen

4. Select the voter’s language if appropriate.

5. Vote. (Once the voter has completed voting and cast his ballot, prepare the Edge for the next voter. If the next voter is a regular voter repeat steps 1 and 4). You can now vote as many times as you want to.

Pinto had been badgering anyone who would care to listen or read, but he has been largely ignored. If his observations prove to be true, we could have mayhem in May 2010. In short, failure of elections. And who else would benefit from this? Your guess is as good as saying what is the obverse side of the P200 bill.

q q q

Aside from this nightmarish, although highly provable, scenario Pinto’s enthusiasm for a forthcoming novel by former SEC Commissioner Perfecto Yasay Jr. has been uncontrollably wild. Titled Terminal Four, the book is set in a time in the near future wherein the president of the country is (again!) a woman who, because she could not run anymore for a second term, starts to plan for a failure of the national elections for the senators, the vice president and the president so she could stay as holdover president or interim head of state.

I’m going to be a rotten spoiler if I divulge how this fictional lady president would pull off this self-inflicted coup, but I could give you a hint: The Comelec (in the story, that is) will be the hand that will hold the smoking gun.

Here’s a teaser from the novel. In this scene a very close adviser to the president assures her, despite her doubts, that the new automated system is bound to fail: “It will fail for the nationally elected positions, 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... The real contest will likely be among the stronger opposition candidates. But our anticipated computerization failure will force a declaration of a failure of election for the national elective posts. And it will be impossible to hold special elections for these positions before June 30. The melee that ensues will seriously threaten the peace and stability of the nation.”

Messrs. Melo, et al., I urge you to be among the first to buy the book on its launching in December.

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Implosion

ENQUIRY
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

Implosion
Sunday, 11 15, 2009

The run of Senator Benigno “Noynoy” Cojuangco Aquino III for the presidency is imploding, well before he has even filed his certificate of candidacy.

Noynoy and his handlers have touted the presidential contest for May, 2010 as a choice between good (Noynoy’s side) and evil (all others’).

The problem with this kind of labelling is that the one who insists on the dichotomy could never be sure his side is so pure and full of saints eternally and all others opposing him are devils, miscreants and sinners. From the time Noynoy announced his candidacy, when all the saints (presumably) were on his side, to his campaign entourage has been added the devils of Philippine politics. Politics is addition, that is a given in any presidential campaign, and you have to accept whoever wants to put in his twenty-five-centavos worth into your campaign. The Liberal Party has observed this policy of accretion to the hilt and without discernment, indiscriminately accepting into its fold many of the rejected devils, miscreants and sinners from the other political parties. Now, the good and evil dichotomy is is no longer valid, with Noynoy having to live and campaign with a full baggage of saints and sinners, each elbowing out the other to gain prominence in the campaign. The result? Confusion. One cannot make out the halo from the horns among the talking heads that surround Noynoy.

Noynoy and his handlers have latched on to the legacy of his famous parents as a campaign credential far too long. It would have sufficed to ride for a while on the crest of the Cory Magic to launch his candidacy, but he and his handlers have relied too much on it. And it would have sufficed to remind the Filipino people that they are worth dying for as did Ninoy say before he was killed in 1983. That would have been enough for a while, but his handlers keep repeating it as if the candidate Noynoy is the resurrection of the dead Ninoy. Noynoy and his handlers do not realize that euphoria is only fleeting, and that there comes a time when it is “gone to graveyards everyone,” as the song goes. And as the last strains of the song die in the wind, one has to proceed without the high-five-slap-happy euphoria and grapple with the realities on the ground.

The electorate are now looking into Noynoy’s own credentials because, after all, it will be Noynoy they will vote for, not Cory or Ninoy.

Noynoy has relied too much on the incompetence of his handlers. Noynoy is a good product to sell, but even a good product can get stale if not handled and merchandised the right way. So far, all the selling has been done to people already “sold” to the idea and need no further convincing. But what about the other buyers? Look at how they handled the SCTEX Interchange Scam bombshell of Congressman Boying Remulla. It has been six days since the Pandora’s Box of Noynoy’s immediate past was opened, yet there is no coherent and plausible explanation from the LP as to how Noynoy could not have been involved in such a scam. The simple denial from the LP that Noynoy did no such thing, or the limp assertion of Noynoy that it is pure black propaganda, will not placate the valid suspicion that Noynoy might not have clean hands after all. Something more concrete, something documented for his defense is what is expected. But it seems Noynoy and the LP are unprepared to handle crisis situations, and if they think that the SCTEX Interchange Scam is just the only one, they’ve got another think coming—a friend in the Nacionalista Party boasted to me that it is just the first in a series.

Noynoy has failed to put himself across as his own man. There is his celebrity sister whose skills at overselling a product rubs a great many people the wrong way. There is the scandalous use of resources of a media network to put Noynoy over for what he is really not. Then there is the campaign manager who, aside from making a half-assed promotion of Noynoy the candidate, also manages to project himself as if he were the one running.

And who is fending off those nasty text messages about Noynoy that I continue to receive even here in snowy and cold Central Asia? Is there anything that Noynoy’s supporters in the business sector can do to stop these messages?

Who is really the chef d’état-major of Noynoy’s campaign? Methinks ’tis a classic case of too many cooks spoiling the broth, or as my friend Reggie would say, too many crooks spoiling the soup. Noynoy, to continue with Reggie’s “malaphor,” should have set the main ingredients of his recipe; he should have personally chosen the condiments that should season his once-heady soupe du jour. The broth at Nonoy’s camp is slowly turning into a retch-inducing slop that only pigs would dearly love. It gives a whole new meaning to the expression, “feeding off the trough.”

Finally, whoever gave the go-signal for that infomercial that keeps running on your television set for three and a half minutes should lose his say in the Noynoy campaign. He never considered the consequences of that infomercial. Never mind if Marian Rivera, et al. were paid or not their fees for holding on to those faux torches of idealism that is passed from one entertainment talent to another; never mind Noynoy’s awkward gait — that validates Manong Ernie’s claim in his column in this paper? — against the balletic stride of Boy Abunda or the manly stance of James Yap; and never mind if a giant media network gave a 50% discount for its airing.

The infomercial does not send any substantive message that communicates the talents of Noynoy (that would qualify him as president), a message that could resonate long after its airing is finished. Rather, it presents Noynoy as the odd man in a sea of talents, or Noynoy as the recipient of a flaming torch — there goes again the association with Ninoy and Cory – that is extinguished everytime the infomercial ends. Reggie describes the infomercial, for lack of a more charitable term, as ampaw: too little substance and nothing in between. My other friend says it’s more like watching a dazzling fireworks show in the sky: too much sparkle and brilliance but too little warmth.

If the LP and its surrogates have mishandled the candidacy of Noynoy, they only have themselves to blame. Sayang.

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Gone too soon

ENQUIRY
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

Gone too soon
Sunday, 11 08, 2009

The late Michael Jackson has a song entitled “Gone Too Soon,” which opens with the following lines: “Like a comet blazing across the evening sky, gone too soon.” It was dedicated by the self-proclaimed King of Pop to a very promising young man whose life was cut short by the scourge of AIDS.

The song and the lyrics could very well describe what has happened to young Sen. Chiz Escudero, who once upon a time figured prominently in the presidential race, but has since effectively dropped out of the race, even as he continues to tickle everyone with the possibility of a rebound by fighting a people’s campaign. Chiz has become the latest victim of recklessness that is wasted among... well, the young.

Chiz has gone too soon. The promise was there: He could wage a decent fight against the more moneyed, more experienced and much more senior pretenders to the seat currently occupied by Gloria Arroyo, with the help of his political party, the Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC). Alas, the recklessness of this young man put out the fight in him too early in the race, and the legions of his adherents who had put their hopes on him are disappointed.

Everything there was in Chiz was his unabashed and unflinching idealism. That should be no problem. But he forgot all about the realities of politics.

Chiz would have none of the strictures of a political party. He opted out of the NPC. He never realized that one who wages battle against the giants in politics must have a political party behind him — a party that guarantees a machinery and network, the command votes and, most important, the money to oil the army of vote-getters and the voters. Above all, he will need allies in the legislature in order to govern effectively, and be able to deliver on his promises. Because of his idealism, Chiz will never have any of that.

Chiz now prefers the electorate to be his partymates, rather than Danding Cojuangco, Louie Villafuerte, Ompong Plaza, et al. Who will now bring the votes to Chiz? Even if Chiz teams up with Sen. Ping Lacson, who is also without a political party, there is no added value to his crusade for a party-less candidacy. Even if he wins, who will be his allies in the compromise-laden field of governance?

He detested his hand and foot being chained to a party. But that does not make of Chiz, having already bolted the NPC, a free man. He shall continue to be chained hand-and-foot to the people for whom he advocates. The electorate he professes to protect, say, for example, the farmers aching to have their piece of Hacienda Luisita, will press him to deliver (should he get elected), with no results in sight, given the adverse configuration of the legislature with its vested interests. This is not to say that Chiz should be faulted for embracing a lost cause, but it simply does not wash for a young man like Chiz to paint himself into a corner by breaking all possibilities of compromise with the well-entrenched politicians in the Congress of the Philippines, each beholden to their special interests. To the extent that he cannot deliver simply because he has donned the white cape of idealism and righteousness to fight those on the Dark Side, and that he cannot be dictated to, or that he will never compromise, Chiz will be a failure. So, who wants him to be president with that certain possibility?

Chiz wanted independence to act freely, to decide only for the common good, and to be effective at governing without resorting to compromises. If he were the president of Utopia, then that could be possible. But this is the Philippines, where, as president, you can appear to act freely, profess to decide for the common good, but can never govern effectively if one does not resort to compromises.

Chiz acted too precipitately, by not weighing the consequences of his declaration of freedom from a party that nurtured his political path for the past 11 years. He has done the unthinkable: Fighting the machinery that made him a member of the House of Representatives and a top ranking senator. My malaprop-spouting friend Reggie will probably call it as biting the hand that feeds the other dogs. I will not call Chiz an ingrate, but very close to that. I will not even refer to funding problem as the immediate cause of his departure from the NPC, but I will give him the benefit of the doubt that it was all pure idealism that drove him to decide to be gone too soon from the NPC.

He may look good for the moment, even gaining new adherents to his brand of politics, but for how long will that hold? When the reality creeps in that he cannot wage a decent fight in the presidential race, he will be left carrying the banner of his brand of politics with but a few idealists close behind.

Chiz never gave a thought to the possible reaction of the stalwarts in the NPC, they who expected him to carry the fight for the party as its standard bearer. What else will anyone expect from these former partymates? Certainly not their support for his candidacy. And what about Loren Legarda who had given way to Chiz, agreeing to slide down as his vice presidential candidate — they were a formidable tandem for a while — and now standing all alone, being peddled by her partymates in the NPC to team up with either Manny Villar or Gibo Teodoro?

“Gone too soon” closes with these lines: “Here one day, gone one night... gone too soon.” One moment, we thought we had a Chiz-Loren tandem; now, that is gone. One moment, we thought we had a Chiz Escudero who would go the distance in the presidential race; now that is an impossibility, Chiz having gone too soon, his blind idealism simply not cut out for the rough and tumble of Philippine politics. Sayang.

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Consistency is the dependable standard

ENQUIRY
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

Consistency is the dependable standard
Sunday, 11 01, 2009

"Loren sticks to the opposition.” Nothing has made me more determined to give my support to the opposition than this online news as I count the end of my days in Bishkek.

Loren Legarda has always been in the opposition, and she should carry that label with pride as the campaign progresses. Then we have former President Joseph Estrada, Mayor Jojo Binay, and Sen. Chiz Escudero as the other bets of the Genuine Opposition. Many other candidates for president and vice president claim to be in the opposition today. Really? How genuine are their claims? The provenance of these claims can be traced to the elections of May 2004, when massive cheating installed a government that does not deserve to rule and to govern.

Anyone who helped install the government of Gloria — and I single out the Liberal Party, regardless of its subsequent breakaway from that government — does not deserve to get the support of the electorate, especially those sympathetic to the opposition, in May 2010.

The breakaway of the LP at the height of the Garci Controversy was never on principle. It was naked political ambition; crass opportunism, if you will. The party saw an opportunity to grab power from within, but was foiled. Since then, it has remained vociferous — through a smaller than half of its total membership, the bigger part having stuck it out with Gloria — against the government. But never for once has the LP admitted to its principal role in the commission of the ultimate crime of fraud against the Filipino people in May 2004.

The LP knew very well Gloria cheated her way to the presidency. And why would the LP not know? The party was there in the thick of the cheating, its leaders were simply noting our objections! Where was the LP when we were crying ourselves hoarse against the fraud? Its members would not even let us speak, or present the election returns to prove the lie of the manufactured certificates of canvass.

The leaders of the LP railroaded the national canvass, and even had the horrendous gall to proclaim Gloria as president at dawn.

Even before the elections, the senators belonging to the LP prevented the report of the Angara Committee establishing the Manapat forgeries on the birth certificate of then presidential candidate Fernando Poe Jr. and the marriage certificate of FPJ’s parents. The LP employed all the tricks to derail the victory of FPJ and Loren in 2004.

It is presidential elections once again, and the LP now offers itself as the alternative to the worst government we have had, whose genesis is unmistakably the responsibility of that party. Pray, tell, how can the LP be the alternative if it is on the same side as Gloria’s?

The choices for 2010 should be limited to those who have been in the Genuine Opposition since 2004, who have consistently fought for truth, who have been the victims of the government installed by modern-day Sauls who were blinded by the light on the road to Malacañang.

The LP derides Estrada for allegedly not admitting to his mistakes that led to his conviction. Now let’s turn the tables and see what we have: A party that is proud of its role in the massive fraud in 2004, which inflicted on the nation a president like Gloria?

However much those in the Genuine Opposition may differ among themselves in their ambitions — with each one wanting to be president or vice-president — their consistency for the cause of truth should be the limiting standard. Only they can claim to be the standard bearers of the opposition.

Whoever was responsible for installing Gloria in 2004 — and I refer to those in the LP who went to bed with her, who prostituted themselves for political patronage, who enjoyed the power that went with being with the lying and the cheating and the stealing, then all too suddenly turned against Gloria — could be the worst politicians we will ever have. The nation does not deserve these opportunists to rule. They will change their color just as easily as they can shout “Garci!”

There is something appealing in politicians who stick to their principles. They are predictable and honest to everyone.

And there is something appalling in politicians who transfer their loyalties when ambitions can no longer be accommodated and sustained or when greed seeks a larger trough and a deeper (pork) barrel from which they must feed. They could sell you to the highest bidder, the keepers of the gold who make the rules — anytime and every time. Remember that time when the leaders of the LP trooped to Malacañang to reiterate their loyalty to Gloria, even offered a province as place of refuge for Her Majesty just in case the natives get too restive? And, all too suddenly, 48 hours later, they had set the motion for a coup against Gloria?

It is a queer cloak that the LP wears — reversible but black inside out. Whenever convenience dictates, the party reverses the cape and simply goes to the other end of its side of the political divide. It is still on the side of Gloria, only that they are fighting Gloria from within and under false colors.

It takes the likes of Loren, Erap, Chiz, and Jojo to stick to the opposition. They could be elbowing each other in order to become the president or vice president, but they are still together on the other side, all on the side of the Genuine Opposition. Somehow, it is sensible when this division in the political spectrum is seen in this light.

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This space has consistently written against the opportunism that the LP has perfected. Its candidates have no claim to be legitimate oppositionists. They have no claim to constancy. They stand only for opportunism and disloyalty. Look at Kiko Pangilinan, for example. Was it not only yesterday that he broke a gavel just to bring home the point that FPJ and Loren lost to Gloria and Noli? Now he is saying he belongs to the opposition!

The Filipino electorate will know better in 2010. They will choose from among the choices in the Genuine Opposition.


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