No to the PCOS machines; get back to manual!

Finally after a long and arduous 22 month wait, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) has proclaimed (as we used to say…for the second twice!) Joel Quiño as the official winner of the May 10, 2010 mayoralty elections in the municipality of Compostela together with his vice-mayoralty candidate Nanette Dangoy. While this may be a victory for the Bakud Party and a victory for Mayor Quiño, allow me to point out clearly that what happened in the town of Compostela is clear proof that the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines did not result in a credible, honest and above all, a quick count elections. It wasn't a victory for the Comelec, although they will never admit it in public.

Quite timely, I wrote yesterday in my Philippine Star column that allowing the misuse of the PCOS machines was the mortal sin of the Comelec and I used what happened in Compostela as the best example, why we should never use those Smartmatic owned machines for they failed the Filipino people. But what I find very strange is that the Comelec is still planning to use those PCOS machines from Smartmatic because it would only cost P1.8 billion as against getting a different kind costing P6.12 billion.

Regardless of what the Comelec will do, I still think that the PCOS machines failed to give us clean and credible elections. I suggest we should go back to the old manual style of elections. Using the old, tried and tested manual system never got Compostela into the trouble that the PCOS machines gave them in the last 22 months! 

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March is always Fire Prevention month and somehow, it is the month when our people get careless or even reckless and then a fire starts and burns away into the night. This is what happened last Saturday in Pahina-Central where 224 people were left homeless and 6 people were injured. Perhaps the people should be reminded that Fire Prevention month happens in March because it is that time of year when the summer heat dries up the earth and it is easy for fires to start and get out of control.

More importantly, in this Fire Prevention month, the City of Cebu must look at this from a wider angle. For instance, I still see a lot of illegally parked vehicles at night, especially in hard to reach areas. These motorists don't seem to care in leaving their vehicles parked on roads where the Fire Trucks need to pass. Of course, this is the job of the Cebu City Traffic Operations & Management (CITOM) to help the Cebu Fire Department remove these obstacles before they can worsen a fire.

Perhaps the CITOM Board should even go further by asking the Cebu City Council to come up with an ordinance identifying certain roads as critical, where violators should not be slapped with a mere illegal parking fine, but reckless endangerment, because their parked vehicles blocks ambulances or fire trucks from entering these critical areas. I think the fines should be stiffer, which should include the towing and impounding of these vehicles.

It is easy enough for the CITOM Board to identify these critical areas that should be designated as "Red Zones" where illegally parked vehicles can be towed and its owners should pay a stiff fine for their recklessness. Talking about traffic violations, let me say it here that I still come across jeepney and taxicabs that roam our streets at night without turning on their lights. I think that the Cebu City Council should slap them with a similar reckless endangerment ordinance for CITOM to enforce.

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The Senate Impeachment court that is trying the case of Supreme Court (SC) Chief Justice Renato Corona has not even finished the presentation of evidence by the defense, but it seems that our Bank Secrecy Law will soon become a casualty of this impeachment case because of the leak of the bank statements of CJ Corona, which has been alleged to have come from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Anti-Money Laundering agency. Of course BSP officials vehemently denied these allegations.

But this is what PSBank Pres. Pascual Garcia, III openly declared before the Senate impeachment court, that BSP Examiner Jerry Leal looked into CJ Corona's bank accounts sometime September 2010. So who is telling the truth in this case? We still have to find out when the Senate impeachment court returns next week. This means that next week's episode in this Filipino reality TV show courtesy of the Philippine Senate will certainly be interesting, if not entertaining, but will not solve the people's problems in coping up with the high prices of basic commodities.

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