Poll protests futile under ‘foolproof’ PCOS system

No wonder the government has been hiding all this time the video of Filipino coast guards accosting Taiwanese poachers in the Batanes seas three weeks ago. Reportedly it shows six guards laughing while shooting high-powered rifles at the foreign craft. If true, then our government must apologize to Taiwan for such barbaric behavior, more so since a Taiwanese was killed.

Whether the guards were laughing at themselves for being poor shots or at the boat for speeding away, their conduct was unprofessional. For that they must atone; they do not deserve the support and respect of compatriots.

It matters not that the Philippines maintains a one-China policy. Or that the incident ocurred in Philippine territorial waters. Or that the slightly smaller but steel-hulled Taiwanese vessel tried twice to ram the fiberglass Philippine patrol craft. The apology is necessary. The guards were superior armed – obviously the reason they could afford to laugh while in a serious situation of firing lethal weapons.

That the government kept such video-info from the public shows bad faith. It must apologize to Filipinos as well for the resultant damage to the country’s image and goodwill, not to mention the lost commerce, tourism, and jobs of overseas workers.

Saying sorry does not lessen a person’s manhood, it adds to his character. As with persons, so with nations. Apologizing will not diminish Philippine sovereignty, even when bully-neighbors are taunting it. It will strengthen the country by learning from its wrongs. Our foreign policy asserts that right is might. Or is our government insincere in stating so?

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Sixty poll protests have been filed so far. The Comelec expects the figure to reach a hundred this week. And this early a commissioner is dismissing the cases as sour grapes: “Losers just can’t accept that they lost.”

Like in 2010 when the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) voting machines were first used, this year’s protests will get nowhere. It’s not because the PCOS are foolproof. It’s because the Comelec, and PCOS-supplier Smartmatic, have devised a system to make protesting futile.

What were begun in 2010 reran with slier features in 2013. Then as now, Comelec-Smartmatic frustrated the spirit of “secret balloting, open counting.” Disabled was the verification receipts by which voters can check if the PCOS read their ballots right. The PCOS source code was withheld from political parties and info-tech experts’ review. PCOS compact-flash (CF) cards – virtual ballot boxes in automated polls – were not tested for fraudulent pre-programmed tallies. The personal passwords for precinct inspectors to authenticate the PCOS election returns (ERs) were discarded. Tallying, canvassing, transmission, and random manual audits were done in secret. Poll protesters would have no hard evidence of cheating. Thus looks useless the case of early count-leader Aga Muhlach in Camarines Sur’s congressional race, who lost just the same after two slow nights of canvassing behind closed doors.

Comelec-Smartmatic also set new rules to facilitate fraud. Padlocks on ballot boxes were replaced with plastic ties. CF cards were rewritable instead of WORM (write-once-read-many). Techs were made to remove and bring unprotected to canvassing centers the CF cards from 18,499 PCOS units that failed to transmit at least eight million votes. The Comelec commissioners proclaimed senators by mere projected number of votes and not actual canvasses, which partisan poll officers mimicked in provincial, city, and municipal levels. All these were irrational, if not illegal. In Quezon, for instance, the surname-sake of administration official candidate Toby Tañada, was proclaimed congressional winner despite being disqualified earlier for falsifying the candidacy certificate. But who will undo what the Comelec national and local officials have done? Certainly not mere protest cases.

The Comelec chief, with self-acclaimed legal brilliancy, declared that it was the cleanest election ever. (He wrongly used as example the supposed absence of any failed election in traditional cheaters’ province Lanao del Sur; actually there were five.) If there were glitches, the chief harrumphed that it was because everyone – power, transport, and telecoms firms; techno-illiterate teacher-inspectors; careless voters – flopped, but never the PCOS. Now who would contradict that in protest cases? Certainly not the declarer and his cohorts.

Senatorial race losers would have to protest to the Senate Electoral Tribunal; those of congressional races, to the House of Reps counterpart. But consisting one-third of Supreme Court justices, the SET and HRET are two-thirds dominated by senators and congressmen. Those legislators sit in Congress by virtue of the PCOS. They certainly will not entertain protests of supposed PCOS fraud.

Losers of local races would have to go to regional trial courts. But those courts will have no proof of the tallying frauds – precisely because there is no source code review, no CF card test, no vote verification receipt or inspector’s digital signature on the ERs. Compounding all that is the presumed regularity of Comelec resolutions, including that of proclaiming senators based on vote guesswork.

In fact, none of the hundreds of poll protests in 2010 prospered. In only one instance, in the mayoralty of Compostela, Cebu, was it proven that the protester was the real winner. Yet that court recount baselessly was criticized as irregular by election lawyer-apologists of Comelec-Smartmatic. It was despite the fact that the protester no longer was contesting the seat, but only wanted to find out the truth. The Comelec would have defied the court had it ruled to unseat the loser – as it did in five other instances, all the way to the Supreme Court, until the terms of the contested seats expired in three years. So ex-congressman Felicito Payumo is playing it smart in not contesting any more the statistical improbability of his losing by a consistent 55-45 percent in the six towns in his Bataan congressional district. He would just support the protests of losing mayoralty bets in those towns – to find out the truth while saving on pointless lawyers fees.

Congress is one venue to investigate PCOS fraud – particularly the statistical improbability of a consistent 60-30-10 percent vote for the administration, opposition, and independents. Then again, it would be a long shot. The emergent Senate pro-administration majority had won nine of 12 seats; they wouldn’t want to inquire into the bases of their victory. The minority, which won three, would stay silent as well. After all, the seats went to heirs of the opposition’s so-called “three kings”.

Expendable to make the results look real were three administration candidates, as well as friends of the administration. Futile would be Born-Again Christian leader Eddie Villanueva’s search for the reason why he landed a consistent No. 19 in all regions, with only slight variances of No. 14 in his Bulacan home-province and No. 20 in the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao.

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