PCOS and the coming elections

Tabok, Mandaue Cit

A couple of days ago, I saw Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes on TV during the presscon. Seated beside him was Comelec Director Jose Tolentino. While Chairman Brillantes appeared beleaguered and seriously pressured by the queries from the inquisitive media personalities on PCOS glitches that happened during the Comelec sponsored mock election, Director Tolentino was seen holding his hands up as if trying to cover his face from the camera and the audience. When Chairman Brillantes strongly and emotionally defended the use of PCOS machines (with pale face) from hands, beaming with a “smirked smile” as if he cheered Chairman Brillantes on his statements.

If you will recall, a month or so after the 2010 elections, Director Tolentino was summoned to appear in a Senate hearing. I remember former Senator Aquilino Pimentel having asked Director Tolentino about the whereabouts and the recipients of the reported 1,400 pcs. reserve memory cards of the PCOS machines. After that Senate hearing, we just read only in the newspapers that he was suspended for six months.

Having obtained a computerized final results of the 2010 elections from the Comelec, I wrote former Congressman Teddy Locsin of Makati City, who was then the chairman of the Committee on Electoral Reforms in Congress, with copy furnished to the Comelec-Manila Central Office, former Senators Mar Roxas and Aquilino Pimentel, Cardinal Ricardo Vidal and Father Carmelo Diola to inform them about the election results which were highly unbelievable. Just imagine, there were six precincts in Mandaue City with zero votes for all the candidates that appeared in the Comelec printed final results. There was no report or manifestation to that effect that the PCOS machines assigned to those precincts were defective and therefore, could not be used in the 2010 elections. Corollary to the absence of manifestation by the precincts’ designated officials, I was able to secure the results of the reported precincts printed in a circular-like-tape. I was confidentially informed though, by an employee of the Comelec office, that their head instructed them not to encode the corresponding results. By this, I can just surmise that the results were manipulated in many ways with the use of PCOS machines to favor some candidates. Unequivocally, there was still that unnecessary and proscribed human intervention which we strongly abhor. Why was this so? Well, only the Comelec knows. Since then, the Comelec did not bother to investigate, moto propio the reported incidents, if only to give credence to the President’s call for the Daang Matuwid.

It behooves therefore, upon all discerning  Filipinos to ponder on the advice of Bishop Jose Palma and the concerns of Glenn Socco, a candidate for Vice Governor of Cebu to be always vigilant on these PCOS machines. As succinctly said by the good Bishop, “It is not on the speed, but on honest and fair elections that count.”

Very well said.

With this perceived flaming scenario of wholesale fraud through PCOs, I hope that our people will never pale in their unwavering concerns and assertions to have an honest and fair elections this coming May 2013, so that the real voice of the people will prevail.

God helps!