Does Comelec know what ‘random manual audit’ is?

Everyone in government knows how bad smuggling is. But does anyone know what to do about it?

The figures are uncontroverted. About 600,000 tons of rice, worth P10 billion, was sneaked into the country last year. Another P8 billion in pork and chicken, P4.8 billion sugar, P3.8 billion fish, and P3.5 billion onions and other crops came in untaxed. Last week oil industry CEOs repeated what President Noynoy Aquino lamented at the Customs bureau anniversary in Feb. 2012. That is, the government loses P40 billion in duties a year from smuggled fuel — one in every three liters.

Smuggling’s effects are pernicious. It impoverishes farm and fisher folk. Not to forget, depriving sales from suppliers of seedlings, fertilizers, pesticides, farm and fishing gear, poultry and hog feeds, and veterinary meds. Company expansions are deferred. Jobs for engineers, chemists, agriculturists, food processors, technicians, and other professions and trades vanish. Government is deprived of revenues for basic health and education. It is even forced to borrow for its CCT feeding program for three million hungry folk; imagine making future generations pay for what’s eaten and excreted today.

Well-known are the smugglers’ ways. Contraband are under- or mis-declared at Customs premises, or sneaked out of free-trade zones. Some are set afloat or landed in unguarded coasts. In the case of fuel, small landing craft siphon from tankers in the high seas.

Administration stalwarts make various suggestions to curb smuggling. None hit the nail on the head. One senator calls for closer ASEAN intelligence cooperation. An ex-senator proposes a separate policing agency, at least against fuel running. The head of the ruling Liberal Party wants smugglers prosecuted, but for critics to give Customs chief Rufino Biazon, his party mate, a break.

Then again, who’s to pinpoint and charge the economic saboteurs, if not Biazon? That the agriculture, hog, poultry, labor, and fuel bigwigs are howling indicates he has not done so.

Amidst the sectors’ outcry against smuggling Biazon sees two conspiracies to oust him. One supposedly wants him out because he has nipped their narco-trade. The other, presumably admin insiders, simply want his job. He has been in politics long enough to sense a demolition job in the offing, he says.

If so, then he can name the narco-traffickers and position seekers. If he has intelligence info enough to trace his detractors, then he must have the juice on the rice, meat, sugar, onion, and fuel smugglers too.

Biazon will not resign just because of the outcry. The President is not about to sack him either, according to Malacañang aides.

Will this mean more of the same? Biazon took over Customs in the last four months of 2011. That year the bureau had a staggering collection shortfall of P55 billion, from the target of P320 billion. In 2012 Biazon had a full year at the helm. The shortfall was worse, P59 billion, even after the reduction of the target from P365 billion to P347 billion.

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The Commission on Elections today consists of four lawyers and a certified public accountant. Despite being college postgraduates, they seem to be dolts. That’s according to university professors, statisticians, mathematicians, and info-technologists from AES (Automated Election Systems) Watch.

The commissioners don’t know what “random manual audit” is, the exasperated AES Watchers say.

The Automated Election Law of 2008 requires a random manual audit of five percent of the precinct results of the voting machines. So do the Comelec-Smartmatic lease-purchase deals for the precinct count optical scanners (PCOS) for Elections 2010 and 2013.

“Audit” means verification. “Manual” means by hand. “Random” means no definite pattern. So RMA is a by-chance physical checking.

In the Army when a delivery of new pistols arrives, a tester picks out one piece each from any number of crates, to load and fire. That’s to check for defective units and determine if the whole lot is to be rejected. At the piers a Customs man opens any number of a ship’s container vans, and see if the goods truly are as stated and valued in the declarations. Even school kids learn of RMA when after a quiz the teacher tells them to give their papers to the classmate two seats away for checking.

In the election RMA, five percent of the precinct clusters are to be randomly picked in each district right after the balloting. Auditors are to swoop down on the clusters, open the ballot boxes, and re-tally the votes — to check against PCOS malfunction or fraud.

In Election 2010 the Comelec’s three-man RMA Committee failed to meet the deadline and number of precincts. The body consisted of the heads of the Parish-Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting, the National Statistic Office, and the Comelec internal audit section. For Election 2013 the Comelec is reactivating the unsuccessful 2010 RMA Committee.

And for the Committee supposedly to meet its targets this time around, the five wise commissioners will do the silliest thing. Four days before Election Day they will select, and two days before publicize, the precinct clusters to be audited!

What the commissioners intend is for the press and public to focus attention on the pre-, not randomly, picked five-percent of the clusters. There, Smartmatic technicians will ensure accuracy of PCOS results. The same cannot be said of the 95-percent others.

In fact, Smartmatic techs will have a field day with the tallies. This is because of a parallel ruling of the five bright commissioners. No longer will the three members of the Board of Election Inspectors (teachers) be made to think up and key in secret personal passwords to start the PCOS units assigned to their cluster. Smartmatic techs alone will do it. The BEIs who are responsible for the sanctity of the ballot will be set aside. Outsiders who are not answerable to the Comelec will take over.

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