On The Correct Path

They are now counting the votes in Congress. The national board of canvassers has decided to do their constitutional function to count the votes in the last elections so that a new President and Vice-President can be proclaimed before Independence Day, which is June 12. This is also in preparation for the change of leadership procedure which will take effect at noontime of June 30, when President Arroyo leaves office.
President-apparent Noynoy Aquino decided to reject a proposed walk-over of Malacanang as suggested by the Arroyo transition team. His reasoning is simple. He has not been proclaimed yet by Congress.
All the wranglings about digital signatures, alleged fraud, cheating and manipulations of the May 10 polls, and authentications of certificates of canvass in the provinces have finally shut down. This is a high-class act of joint Houses of Congress and definitely is good for the nation.
More representatives of the diplomatic community have trooped to the Times Street residence of Noynoy Aquino to congratulate him and to express the cooperation of their respective governments to his administration. Of course, this should not preclude the fact that Congress still has to canvass the votes and officially declare the winners in the two highest seats of the land.
However, it should be pointed that the trend of events of recent days augurs well for the future of this nation. It has expressed its will on who should lead the country for the next six years and the joint public session of Congress is now doing its function to count the votes and proclaim the winners on the scheduled date.
Foreign countries will express amazement on the conduct of Filipinos when it comes to choosing their leaders. The Filipino people have decided to choose the path of automation and technology to choose their elective leaders in the hope that it will shorten the time to check the results as well as deter any cheating. And with more fine tuning of the automation process, the decision to poll automation must be a sensible move.

All Talks

Talks of massive cheating and systematic fraud have pre-emptied the scheduled national canvass of presidential and vice-presidential candidates in Congress. The congressional panel involved in the canvass have shown a propensity to question every glitch and discrepancy in the preparation of electional returns and certificates of canvass. The Comelec effort to manage an orderly election process is not only in question, but it has to pass the strictest scrutiny from a congressional body whose constitutional mandate is to insure that the winning candidates are anointed and proclaimed before the outgoing President leaves office.

Definitely, the on-going hearings in the Lower House to hear electoral complaints add to a perception of distrust in the May 10 elections. And this has contributed to the on-going confusion in the joint congressional task to canvass the votes.

Until now, there is just a build-up of talks and tales of syndicates offering to cheat the elections and make candidates win. Anyone can just come out and build a tale of cheating and fraud. Proofs of these allegations are difficult to find from people who are the sources of these talks of cheating and fraud.

Meanwhile, Comelec and Smartmatic offficials have not hidden from public view and have faced their critics. They are out there, in the hearings and the joint canvassing panel in Congress, trying their best to answer and explain the automated election process.

Expect glitches to occur, since this is the first elections where the country sought the technology of automation to speed up the counting process and prevent massive cheating that usually happened in past elections.

The teachers who comprised the board of election inspectors and the workhorses in the last elections, may not have been perfect in their work. They may have have erred in some of the tasks that they have to do during the day of the voting. But it should be noted that this is also the first time that they are dealing with a new technology to automate the election process. Glitches are expected. Repeat, glitches are expected. Unless there is a deliberate attempt to transgress any rule or procedure, so massive in scope as to manipulate results, then any delaying tactic that is going now in the national canvass to check every nook and cranny of the 2010 election process, is justified. But so far, more than two weeks after the polls, nothing has been found to prove that a systematic manipulation of the May 10 polls has occurred.

It is now up to the Senate President and the Speaker of the House who handle the national canvass procedure, as well as the chairman of the House committee on suffrage and election reforms, if they can control or stop the slow undoing of the election process last May 10, or they can fast-track what they are doing and save the people's mandate that was realized and is already known.

The People's Mandate is not Easy to Erase

All the Filipino people can do now is pray, pray that the mandate of the May 10 polls will be preserved. Right now, the hearings being conducted by the House committee on electoral reforms and suffrage have succeeded in casting doubts on the legality and success of the first automated national elections in the country. Reading from written scripts, the complainants, mostly losing candidates who hold national positions and in danger of losing them, took turns in attacking the Comelec and Smartmatic as well as enumerating alleged instances of cheating, fraud, wrong procedures and technicalities that supposedly happened during the May 10 polls. And the worst fear has been heard. Due to non-use of digital signatures by the board of election inspectors (BEIs) when election returns were transmitted, the results would be, according to one of the complainants, null and void. Thus, the said complainant continued, the May 10 polls should be considered illegal and the results be made null and void. It was suggested by the complainant that a comprehensive manual audit must be made and if it is not possible, a new national elections should be held.

A question should be raised: who has the authority to declare an elections null and void? It should be the Comelec only, unless the complainants file a strong petition and ask the Supreme Court to nullify it. The House committee is not in a position to do it. The purpose of the hearing is hear and find out what happened during the May 10 polls so that if there is a need to improve the just-passed Automated Election Law, now is the time to gather data and pass subsequent legislation to improve the law in preparation for the 2013 polls.

But the Comelec is all convinced that the May 10 polls was a resounding success.

Surely, there is a hand manipulating these events surrounding the recent polls. It is difficult to pinpoint just what is going on. Is it a well-oiled machinery to derail the results, or is it an instant collaboration of losers coming out to prevent the mandate of the 2010 polls from being fulfilled?

Confusing as it may, all the people can do now is pray and then go out and express their reactions to everyone. One strong move is to gather outside Congress who will conduct an official canvass of the votes for the presidential and vice-presidential positions and demonstrate their disapproval over attempts to derail the May 10 polls. The mandate of the people cannot simply go to waste because of unproven allegations from sour losers.

Comelec Decisions Must Be Respected

A fresh development from the brewing crisis brought out by a flurry of protests from losing candidates about alleged fraud and cheating in the last national elections is a threat from a losing senatorial candidate to file a petition to the Supreme Court to nullify the results. The candidate was not specific in the news report if he is asking for the nullification of all results of the May 10 polls. The Comelec, although a constitutional body assigned to conduct elections, has been sidetracked by protesting entities affected by supposed fraud and cheating and instead, have brought their case before the media. Without allowing the Comelec to conduct a formal investigation on electoral protests, the losing candidates and groups who are in the center of these protests, are pushing the country to the edge of a political crisis. It is not known whether there is an unseen hand in charge of these protests that unknowingly have spread and grown in number. It would not be a suprise if all the provinces in the country would have electoral protests. In effect, it would complete an answer to the question on whether the cheating is massive and nationwide. At any rate, it is still the Comelec as a constitutional body that will decide whether there is systematic cheating that favors a winning candidate over the loser.
It is difficult to assess the involvement of the Supreme Court, the Congress, or the Excutive branch in this problem. The Comelec, as a constitutional body, must be respected and its decision to declare a winner a winner or a loser a loser, must remain unsullied and should be followed. No other constitutional body must overrule what the Comelec has done. Otherwise, this country will enter into a crisis mode that is difficult to get out of.

Repercussions of Poll Results

The Filipino people have spoken. They favored a sincere candidate that will attack the twin problems of corruption and poverty. Thus, majority of them voted for Noynoy Aquino as the next president of the country. As of this writing, Aquino is leading his next rival in the most number of votes by five to six million votes, with almost 90% of the clustered precints from all over the transmitting their results. Congress has agreed to make an official canvass of votes for president and vice-president respectively much earlier than the scheduled May 31 date as prescribed by law.
The expected ascendancy of Noynoy Aquino as the next President means that the
country is facing a regime of change. And this change is directed towards leading the Filipinos to a path of renewed national transformation both in themselves and and in their government. Meaning, the kind of governance that Aquino has hinted he will follow is one from the heart and with a conscience with only the Filipino people and the country's welfare in mind. Grafted to this mission is the promise to implement the reform tasks to stomp out graft and corruption as well as eliminate or neutralize the threat of poverty by giving each Filipino an opportunity to improve his/her economic standing in life. Six years is a long time for a determined government to improve and institute reforms in the country. Aquino will continue to enjoy the trust and support that he received in the recent polls by putting into action the programs that he outlined during his campaign sorties. He only needs to make his bold moves and the Filipino people will follow.

May 10 Polls Still A Go

COMELEC continues to believe that problems in the voting machines can be fixed before voting day. Thus, since it is mandated by law to enforce and implement the automated elections law, COMELEC is pushing through with the elections despite massive protestations from various civil society groups as well as concerned candidates that the May 10 polls be postponed. The May 10 polls will therefore push through, unless another test run of the CF memory cards inside the PCOS machines malfunction again. It is therefore up to the COMELEC to decide the fate of the first automated elections in the country and in effect, the fate of a nation. But this constitutional entity must be aware that the people still have the upperhand in deciding what is best. The will of the people must be preserved, as always, in any nationwide elections, and the May 10 polls is no different from previous elections except in the manner in which the voting was conducted. There is nothing elese that the Filipino people can do in the coming days except to prepare for the coming elections for this will decide the future of the country for the next six years. This is the stepping stone to reaching the dream of millions of Filipinos, especially to the millions who who have been suffering from the effects of massive corruption in government and extreme poverty in society. The May 10 elections is by far the only path open to the people to get even with those in power who have monopolized political and socio-economic power in the country. For once, the general public will rule over any one else, even for just one day, when they vote deserving candidates for public office. But even after voting, the people should remain vigilant and remain ready to respond aggressively to any threat to subvert this sacred exercise of suffrage under a democratic way of life.

Unbelievable!!!

The word to describe it is "unbelievable". During its latest press conference heard and watched by Filipinos nationwide and even around the world through satellite, the COMELEC and Smartmatic officials were telling the media people that the malfunctioning memory cards inside the PCOS machines were caused by "human error". Can you believe that? Weren't these memory cards and the
PCOS machines subjected to rigorous quality control inspections, tested and re-tested in the production line before they were certified as ready for use in the May 10 polls? A riled Angelo Reyes, the former Energy secretary who was once a chief of staff of the AFP under President Estrada and who is now running for public office through partylist, raised his voice in the said press conference to demand an investigation, hinting that it was not a simple "human glitch" that caused the PCOS voting machines to malfunction during a recent test run. One should ask now, although it is still premature, if there is a plot to program the failure of the May 10 polls so that instead of electing new set of leaders, chaos and confusion will reign during and after the voting day. From Day 1 until the last test run of the voting machines, it appears that the COMELEC kept on a facade of confidence and calm, dispelling rumors and apprehensions from the various civil society groups and the general public that something sinister is afoot to cause the first automated polls in the country to fail. And now the race against the clock to correct the "human error" as well as the new faced-saving measure being launched to regain the confidence of the voters and the candidates on the trustworthiness of the voting machines has begun. And it would appear, from the many questions and suggestions that the COMELEC and Smartmatic have halfheartedly addressed or even failed to address from concerned sectors of society, that there is a slim chance that the COMELEC can have a complaint-free and glitch-free election day. From being the first country in the world to switch directly from manual to automated polls, the Philippines might instead become another Thailand where the people have questioned the authority of its leaders and strongly exercised their right to protest for a better government.