Yes, the Comelec needs total overhaul!

Perhaps he read my Saturday Mar. 2 column, this is why I totally and completely agree with Senatorial candidate Sen. Gringo Honasan that there ought to be a law that should ban the conduct of surveys during the election period. In this land of Daang Matuwid, which boasts of is determination to rid this nation of corruption, who knows what the corrupt would do in paying for the services of pollsters like Social Weather Station (SWS) or Pulse Asia, which radio commentators in the Visayas and Mindanao have now branded as “False Asia” because those recent surveys cannot be validated. These pollsters will never give you the kind of information that they ask those whom they survey, which can be manipulated to favor certain candidates.

While he is at it, may I suggest a total overhaul of the Commission on Elections (Comelec), wherein its highly-centralized system is no longer beneficial to the needs of our electorate. For instance, why should the Comelec be a constitutional body and can only be removed by impeachment? This nation has seen various systems of governance since the 1935 Constitution was in place. However, when President Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law, he threw out the Constitution, but kept the same Comelec system under his watchful eye so that he could win the elections all the time.

We have just observed the 27th EDSA Revolt which was actually triggered by the mass walk out of the computer programmers at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) because they could no longer stand the cheating by the Comelec during that time. Yet when President Cory Aquino took over, there was no investigation of that incident simply because it did not matter anymore, as they were already in power. For the sake of the Filipino voter they should have investigated and verified those claims of cheating so it would have been put on official record, but none was conducted.

We’ve been through two EDSA revolts, but the system in place in the Comelec has never been changed. Only the top officials of the Comelec were replaced, but the same machinery for cheating was never looked into by the next Comelec officials. Today, we are faced with a dark cloud of uncertainty as the top officials of the Comelec pushed through with the electronic Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines, which do not yet have source code, violating Comelec laws and exposing us to electronic “dagdag bawas.”

Why has this Comelec with the nod of the Supreme Court allowed itself to purchase 82,000 PCOS machines for billions of pesos, when people in the IT business know that in this every changing world of techno gadgetry, cellphones and other digital things get obsolete in less than three years? Whether they admit it or not, the Supreme Court (SC) allowed itself to be fooled by the Comelec on the PCOS machines and thus, doomed the elections in this country to be susceptible to electronic “dagdag bawas.”

With less than three months left, Comelec officials have not yet decided to go into manual counting, which is a better alternative. Somehow the media has blown out of proportion reports of “Dagdag Bawas” in the 2004 elections. But the truth is dagdag bawas in manual counting only happens in areas where warlords roam with impunity like what we saw in Maguindanao. The 2004 victory of then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA), which was wrongly attributed to cheating by the Cebuano electorate, was not through dagdag bawas but rather because presidential candidate Fernando Poe Jr. (FPJ) just did not have any local government lineup in Cebu.

Indeed, after the May 2013 elections, Congress should create a consultative body which should look at how we can totally overhaul the Comelec and make it serve the Filipino people, rather than today where it serves only the interests of political parties. Once more, let’s go manual counting!

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Congratulations are in order for the Cebu Country Club (CCC) Team, led by Pres. Ramontito “Tito Mon” Garcia in winning the 66th Philippine Airlines (PAL) Interclub Men’s Golf Tournament, when Mark Dy shot a two-under par 70 giving the team 38 points on the last day, thus giving CCC a four-day score of 507 and a huge 16-point victory margin over Alabang.

This back-to-back historic win for CCC marks great beginnings for the CCC Golf team in the Year 2013, which last week also won the Seniors Division in the PAL Tournament. People may say that we won because it was their “home turf”, but the CCC course, especially its greens is somewhat mercurial, where no one can predict where you ball moves after you’ve made your putt.

This victory can hopefully trigger the next phase for CCC, which is planning to completely make over the entire golf course by Jack Nicklaus Design Team, something that they experienced with great success at the Wack Wack Golf Club and the Manila Golf Club, where its golf shares shot up to record heights after they completed making over their golf course.

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