It’s Brillantes who’s sabotaging election

Reading last week’s Gotcha about the AnDayaMo (Anti-Dynasty Movement), many want more politicos petitioned as well for Comelec debarment. Readers detail at least three dynasties that fall within Atty. Alex Lacson’s two “clear and obvious” types. That is, spouses, parents, offspring, or siblings angling to succeed the incumbents, or running in pair for linked positions: governor-vice governor, mayor-vice mayor.

In Pantabangan, Nueva Ecija, Mayor Romeo Borja Sr. and son Vice Mayor Romeo Jr. are seeking reelection. The town has been bankrupted by blackouts allegedly due to their P80-million electricity arrears.

In Batangas City, Eduardo Dimacuha is running to replace his wife Vilma as mayor. Eduardo was once a mayor, succeeded by son Dondon.

In Ozamiz City, Reynaldo Parojinog is returning as mayor, in lieu of daughter Nova P. Echavez who now is gunning for vice.

The readers reasonably dread the Ampatuan-like dynasts, so want AnDayaMo to file cases in their behalf. But Lacson says he can handle only his group’s own disqualification raps against Rodrigo Duterte of Davao City, Dennis Pineda of Pampanga, Sherwin and Rexlon Gatchalian of Valenzuela City, and Luis and Miguel Villafuerte of Camarines Sur.

Still, Lacson offers to help the readers prepare pleas before their local Comelec offices. Or, they can have lawyers use AnDayaMo’s arguments and add their own. E-mail Lacson at [email protected].

If this catches on, other citizens will swarm the Comelec with cases nationwide. Seeing a groundswell against political dynasties, the poll body finally might use its vast powers, albeit late, to enforce the constitutional ban.

It would take strong political will, of course. But it can be, in fact had been done. On a parallel issue, for one, the Comelec of old strictly used to recognize only 12 groups for party-list representation. Later commissioners, likely on the take, accredited up to 184. The present commissioners have pared them down to 97 — still suspiciously too many, and mostly with names starting with “A” or “1” in an obvious ploy to be ahead in the ballot list.

In the anti-political dynasty movement, citizens’ action is crucial. Outsiders cannot be expected to fight the local dynasts. If there are not a hundred or ten or even one good man in a town to stand up for right, then it deserves dynastic fire and brimstone.

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Is Comelec chairman Sixto Brillantes cracking up? He might deny so, but he’s showing signs of it.

Criticized last month for the poll body’s shoddy provisions for automated balloting, he sneered if info-tech experts want to return to tedious manual counting. The critics persisted, wanting only assurance that the Comelec would make automation work. Whereupon, Brillantes two weeks later dared them to make the Supreme Court discontinue the midterm election in May. Still the experts pressed on, for the Comelec continued to dodge the questions they were raising. This time, Brillantes did what only an inept, egotistic paranoid would do: he accused them of aiming to sabotage the election.

Brillantes zeroed in on two groups: the CenPEG (Center for People Empowerment in Governance) and the AES (Automated Election System) Watch.

CenPEG consists mostly of University of the Philippines professors; its chairman is National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera. It is a member of the broader AES Watch, in turn headed by former Vice President Teofisto Guingona Jr. AES Watch includes mathematicians, academics, info-technologists, and religious leaders. Its stationery lists some:

UP Alumni Association, National Secretariat for Social Action (of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, Bishops Broderick Pabillo and Deogracias Iñiguez Jr. (of the CBCP Commission on Public Affairs), Ecumenical Bishops Forum (of Born-Again Christians), National Council of Churches of the Philippines (of mainstream Protestants), dean Rachel Roxas-Uy of the De La Salle University-College of Computer Science, chairwoman Reena Estuar of the Ateneo de Manila University-Department of Information Communications System, Chairman Jaime Caro of the UP-Department of Computer Science, Philippine Computer Society, Association of Major Religious Superiors in the Philippines, Computer Professionals Union, Solidarity Philippines, Philippine Computer Emergency Response Team, National Union of Students of the Philippines, Engr. Rodolfo Lozada Jr., Dilaab-Hearts Foundation, Senior Catholic Citizens Organization, Coordinating Council for People’s Development and Governance, Health Alliance for Democracy, Transparent Elections.org, Concerned Citizens Movement, Sisters Association in Mindanao, Association of Schools of Public Administration in the Philippines, Computing Society of the Philippines, Philippine Computer Society Foundation, Atty. Al Vitangcol.

Now why would such professional associations and individuals want to sabotage the May 2013 congressional-local elections?

Through spokesman James Jimenez, Brillantes had claimed a sabotage plot before. That was in August 2012, when Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano exposed the capricious, overpriced refurnishing of Brillantes’ official mansion in Baguio City. Jimenez cited the sudden upsurge of criticisms in the tri-media then as Brillantes’ proof of sabotage.

That brought to mind how Marcos twice saw sabotage in news reports as well. The first time was in 1972, to justify his grandiose New Society through Martial Law. The second was in 1986, when his conjugal dictatorship with wife Imelda was crumbling. Apparently, blaming the press is nothing new for old fogies.

Brillantes’ today perceives sabotage in “repeated lies” of CenPEG and AES Watch about the precinct count optical scanners (PCOS). He finds maddening the two groups’ insistence that the Philippines would be using pirated technology. This won’t be so, he says, even though the PCOS developer Dominion of Canada has rescinded the sales license of dealer Smartmatic of Venezuela. He says the Philippines legally owns the products since the Comelec bought the 82,000 PCOS units in March 2012, while Dominion disenfranchised Smartmatic two months later.

Yet Brillantes cannot answer the simple question of CenPEG and AES Watch. If the Comelec legally owns the PCOS, how come it does not have the source code to run the machines?

The source code is the all-important set of computer commands to make the PCOS recognize and count the vote marks, reject fake ballots, and transmit the tallies to canvassing centers. The Automated Election Code of 2008 and the initial Comelec-Smartmatic lease contract of 2009 require the showing of the source code to the public, through IT experts, and to political parties. Too, the submission of the code to a reputable independent tester, for accuracy and security.

Smartmatic, because unlicensed, cannot turn over any source code to the Comelec. Much more, to have it tested. So how can Brillantes assure the IT experts that the count would be accurate?

In seeing sabotage in criticisms, might Brillantes only be egotistically covering up his ineptitude? Comelec sources recount at least two instances when he refused to give in to suggestions of investigations. One was about Cayetano’s exposé of the exorbitant mansion remodeling; the other was about the Comelec’s overpriced purchase of ballot printing ink, exposed by Cayetano as well. In both Brillantes said that to submit to investigation would only prove his critic Cayetano right, and him wrong.

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