A deafening silence from the Comelec

There are whistleblowers and there are whistleblowers. But in this particular election there are actually three whistleblowers. There’s “Koala Bear” who is faceless, but nonetheless gave a very damaging testimony via a video presscon. The main stream media is trying to discredit him as he hasn’t really come up with real evidence to be considered credible enough to be heard. Until and unless this fellow decides to remove his mask only then can we ascertain whether he is credible or not.

Of course we can understand why this whistleblower wants to hide his identity; after all, we’re talking about winning power in Malacañang, the biggest prize in this election. There are other lesser candidates who have been killed for much less, just to be able to win and grab power. The most infamous amongst them is the Ampatuan massacre who killed his political rival, including all the journalists that surrounded him. So if this Koala bear is for real, I hope he is given the utmost security. But he must surface without his mask, otherwise he should be hanged as then Energy Chief Angie Reyes once quipped about those who cheat in the elections.

Meanwhile there are two other whistleblowers who sought the help of former Solicitor General Frank Chavez and held a presscon in Makati. They did not hide their faces. They are Melchor Magdamo who was in the staff of Comelec Chairman Jose Melo and Dr. Arwin Serrano, a member of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) who was assigned to the Comelec. They first came up with that report about the attempt to purchase the blue folders at P380 each that the Comelec en banc decided to cancel, which should give them a very high credibility rate.

These whistleblowers were together with Mr. Ernesto del Rosario, from the Comelec’s Information Technology Department who had details on the anomalies in the automated systems. This centers on the accuracy of the vote count after the compact flash cards in the PCOS machines malfunctioned. Did it really malfunction as reported or are we seeing face-to-face the mother of all electronic scams being perpetrated in this country?

Meanwhile, the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) finally ended its vote count and concluded that there were many discrepancies in the election returns, but no systematic fraud occurred. PPCRV spoke too soon, in light that even the 86-member foreign media observers have already declared that the May 10 polls was neither fair nor honest.

Please don’t get me wrong, we never liked Erap from day one. I strongly believe that he shouldn’t have been pardoned by Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. I also believe that the Supreme Court (SC) or the Comelec erred in allowing him to run again. But what happened to Erap we must give thanks to the Cory Constitution, for its provisions for prohibiting former Presidents to run again is so damn vague. I’d also like to point out that I’m not with the people who say,”Thanks to Noynoy’s running for President because without him, we’d have an Erap Presidency all over again!”

If the majority of the Filipino people truly wanted another Erap Presidency, who are we in the minority to question our system of democracy? What is important for us to find out is whether the last May 10 elections was credible and honest regardless of the consequences, that on a worst case scenario, we’d have Erap as President again! Give me a Noynoy Presidency anytime against an Erap Presidency. But we want to know the real score of how the Filipino voters really voted for which candidate.

The Comelec should be more circumspect and instead of fending off those whistleblowers (like when they listened to those same whistleblowers and stopped buying those overpriced folders) they should probe deeply into these disturbing questions for the benefit of the Filipino voters like you and me who have very disturbing questions about the discrepancies that we have seen in their own canvass.

Instead of demanding that whistleblowers show proof of fraud, again we are asking the Comelec to tell us why is it that in the Province of Cebu, the total number of voters was 1,500,628. If you added all the votes cast for all who ran for President at 1,411,850 and subtracted this number from the 1,500,628, then you will see a figure of 88,778 voters who did not vote for any President! In the Vice-Presidential race, the figure is higher at 151, 954 who did not vote for a VP! Can they answer us why Jun Davide got 543,246 votes, while his running mate Greg Sanchez got 543,924 votes, which is 678 votes higher than Jun Davide? These are disturbing questions that Comelec ought to honor us with a reply, but instead we only get a deafening silence from them. We can only reckon that they can’t explain it at all!