The Church and PCOS

There will be gnashing of teeth among those who pushed for the RH bill. The victory from the vote of a tarnished Congress has reawakened the Church. It needs to fight back. As an institution with followers it cannot take this assault sitting down.

By taking on the PCOS problem the conflict is no longer between Church and State but of the Church using its clout on behalf of disenfranchised citizens. What had looked like merely an issue of birth control had graver implications.

Those who cheered the tarnished vote in Congress for the RH bill scoffed at the Church because anyway there is no such thing as a Catholic vote.

Today it is not about supporting or dumping candidates. Pundits say that the case against the RH bill before the Supreme Court will be defeated. It is an emasculated court that can be expected to cave in under Palace pressure just as Congress did.

*      *      *

But just when the Church’s cause was looking hopeless, it gains a powerful weapon that has nothing to do with religion or depopulation but on a very secular issue: the PCOS elections. Despite incontrovertible proof that it was marred by wholesale fraud using the machines, the government is set to use the same in 2013, and presumably in the more crucial 2016.

However, much we may dislike the Church’s ability to marshal the masses, the fact is it is the only organized group in the country that can bring the PCOS issue to them. It has the infrastructure. But it will have to work at it to gain support from the different sectors.

It has been difficult to get Filipinos to understand why we should resist the use of the PCOS in the coming election. Firstly computer language is technical. It is terra incognita as far as voters are concerned. That is why Smartmatic-Comelec is confident that it can get away with PCOS. After all, with the same system and political structure, and a predominantly ignorant electorate, civic groups would be fighting an uphill battle. Fraud in manual elections is limited in scope and can be traced. Smartmatic-Comelec using PCOS machines is wholesale fraud. The counting happens even before the election. Winners and losers are pre-selected and the machines are then used to confirm the selection. (See the link at the bottom of this column on how this is done.)

But the equation will change if the embattled Church takes on the PCOS issue because it affects all Filipinos, whether Catholics and non-Catholics.

The issue of the RH bill may be about the Church’s teachings on reproduction but it is not the same as the PCOS. It is a core political issue. It is whether we survive as an independent and democratic country. It is a titanic struggle between the Church’s mass organization against forces who want to decide the agenda for our country. If these forces want the country to do its bidding they will have to choose leaders who will cooperate, but they have to win in elections. The RH bill is only one of the items in the agenda but it foreshadows a grave danger to our survival as a nation.

*      *      *

The National Secretariat for Social Action-Justice and Peace (Nassa), the social action and development arm of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has announced its willingness to help the different civic groups — Tandem, Cenpeg etc. that have banded together against PCOS.

It put its weight behind a report submitted to the House committee on suffrage and electoral reforms which questioned the accuracy of the last elections.

“__However, an audit conducted by Information Technology election groups showed that the accuracy rate in the mock election was actually 97.21519 percent or 557 errors in 20,000 marks.” Smartmatic and Comelec have not bothered to answer the accuracy question.

The CBCP-Nassa urged President Aquino and the committees on suffrage and electoral reforms of the House and the Senate to look into the flaws of the technology used by Smartmatic and find solutions to address them. “Good governance starts with election of candidates. We want the counting of votes to be accurate and reliable, and not just fast, to protect the sacred right and will of the electorates,” CBCP-Nassa said in a statement.

*      *      *

“In spite of the vigorous protestations of Commission on Elections Chairman Sixto Brillantes, I think Archbishop Jose Palma is absolutely right in asking questions about the Smartmatic precinct count optical scan machines.

Brillantes has gone so far as to connect the issue of the PCOS machines to the aggressive efforts of the government to push for the passage of the RH Law. This is a cheap shot. He even asked if the good bishop knew anything about computers.

 The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines through Bishop Palma is not the only one questioning the integrity of the PCOS machines. Other sectors including the Senate are asking a lot of questions.

Is Brillantes really that naive that just because he says that the PCOS machines can be trusted, everyone should believe him? He must be living in Never Never Land,” writes Florenzo Fianza.

*      *      *

But while these questions remain unanswered the Comelec has reacquired the PCOS machines used in the 2010 elections. As far as Comelec and Smartmatic are concerned allegations of fraud are not relevant to automated elections. The public is being made to believe that there cannot be fraud in automated elections because machines do not lie. What is not told to the public is that the machines can be made to lie and computer experts have provided evidence that this is what happened in May 2010.

*      *      *

Perhaps, more significantly, the Smartmatic-PCOS question is not confined to the Philippines.

The notion of controlling elections through manipulation of machines is happening in other parts of the world buying automated electoral system. We should look into what other countries experienced and what they did to combat the problem. Because of the questionable accuracy of automated electoral systems, some countries have opted out and reverted to manual elections. Germany is the most significant country to have done this.

For those who want to know more about how machines can be used to commit fraud here is a video you can watch on www.veoh.com. It shows that there is “an executable program embedded in memory cards that can alter the PCOS program.”