The PCOS “tikas” revealed in Compostela

Last Tuesday, Rep. Tomas Osmeña got a big boost in his return-to-the-mayor’s office bid when The Freeman gave him the headline, “Osmeña claims he’s going to win.” Of course, this claim was refuted by incumbent Mayor Michael Rama, who questioned his surveys, simply because his own surveys give him the edge in this coming May 2013 polls. So if you listened to their respective radio barkers, both camps are claiming victory already.

But then the problem with elections is… there are no second placers. In fact, there is a truism in Philippine elections that there are only winners in our political race and no losers. So how can this be? Of course, the loser’s category is composed of those who claim to have been cheated during the elections.

But like it or not, the probability of cheating in the coming May 2013 elections is quite high. Thanks to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) for insisting on the use of the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS), which until today, still has no source code. A source code is that operating readable program that makes the hardware called PCOS machines work.

We’ve been writing everything that is wrong with the PCOS machines and finally, the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) have clearly understood what we’ve been harping all along. In simple terms, Smartmatic is nothing but a mere broker or agent for an electronic election counting systems. They somehow conned the Comelec to lease by the billions those PCOS machines for the 2010 elections, which we’ve been saying was “misused” in the May 2010 elections. But no one wants to listen because if we destroyed the credibility of the PCOS machines, it would put a dark shadow on the credibility of the election of Pres. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino, III. But the truth about the PCOS is now out!

We don’t have to look far to see a very clear example of how faulty those PCOS can be. We’ve already written here about the incident that happened in the town of Compostela, wherein Mayor Joel Quiño supposedly won over former Mayor Ritchie Wagas. But Quiño’s proclamation was stopped and the people of Compostela demanded that the Comelec do the official count in the town plaza in front of all contending parties and their supporters and whoever wins in that counting will be accepted as the winner.

But for 22 months, the Comelec hemmed and hawed and wavered, denying the people of Compostela their right for honest and clean elections. If the Comelec truly supports the Filipino people, opening up the ballot boxes would have been a trivial matter and the right thing to do. But we know too well that gods in the Comelec do not want those ballot boxes opened before the eyes of the public, lest it would reveal the inadequacies of the PCOS machines or worse… that the machines were manipulated through a pre-programmed source code.

Of course, 22 months later, to save the Comelec from further embarrassment, they still proclaimed Mayor Joel Quiño as the winner in the 2010 polls. But lo and behold, my good friend, Elias Baquero of SunStar Daily came up with an article last Friday, March 22, that a recount was ordered by Judge Estela Alma Singco of the Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch and the results were startling.

Let me quote that point written by Elias Baquero, “The recounting of one ballot box from Cluster Precinct 1 of Barangay Poblacion, Compostela showed Wagas getting 288 votes against Quiño’s 214. There were 21 stray ballots and eight rejected ballots. Tranni Ferrer, RTC Branch 55 Clerk of Court who chaired the election committee, also found out that based on the PCOS, Quiño got 468 against Waga’s 289. Wagas told the media that initial result of the recounting is already a victory on their part because they were able to prove that the result of the election based on PCOS does not reflect the sentiment of the people. “The ballots are the mother documents which reflect the will of the people. The objective of my protest is to satisfy the issue of truth.” Wagas said.”

We should thank former Mayor Ritchie Wagas for pushing through with his petition in court because it really validates what we’ve been saying about the PCOS machines.

Now the truth has surfaced, according to the SunStar report, that out of the 34 clustered precincts, only two were transmitted and of the 32 remaining precincts, only 20 ERs appeared on the PCOS machines. Then there is that revelation that the serial numbers of the PCOS machines did not tally with the electronic ERs generated from the PCOS machines. So what more proof do you folks need? It is now crystal clear that the PCOS machines were at best faulty or at worse, used to allow certain candidates to win the elections.

With the 2013 elections a mere 40 days away, it is very disturbing that the Comelec still closes their eyes and ears to our pleas to return to the manual election which was easier to verify. But the die has been cast. I predict that this elections will be the marred by charges of fraud because the PCOS machines can no longer be trusted. Worse of all, the Comelec cannot produce the source code that it has been saying it owns because Dominion Voting systems cancelled its deal with Smartmatic.

*  *  *

Email: [email protected]