Battling with ‘normalcy’

While it is the Napoles pork barrel scam that has  caught the public imagination on just how corrupt the government is, it is the Smartmatic-PCOS elections that is the mother of all scams. It hits at the heart of our democracy because it is designed to end people’s sovereignty. So the two must not be separated.

The incumbent government has one and the same objective – to control and dominate the country without declaring martial law or setting up an authoritarian government. The most offensive part of the strategy is to present a campaign against corruption while being even more corrupt than previous administrations.  And worse it does not hesitate to destroy institutions in its drive to eliminate opposition and impose tyranny. 

*      *      *

 Comelec under this administration is to simply ignore the travesty of the 2010 and 2013 that computer experts and political analysts have already shown to have been failed elections.  

But even in the midst of political turmoil, the Comelec has announced preparations for the next election. It shows a disrespect for democratic processes and the law.

As far as the Comelec is concerned it has turned over elections to a foreign group in violation of the Constitution. Officials headed by Chairman Brillantes are acting more like thugs and will continue ignoring the law. It is banking on the ignorance or complacency of a vast majority of  Filipinos who do not care or bother to understand just what happened to the 2010 and 2013 election.

But the few who do care have documented the anomalies in Smartmatic generated election. They have fought hard to show how it happened that instead of voters as human beings, pre-programmed machines decided who wins or who loses in elections.

*      *      *

The latest expose comes from a group that has decided to go around the country and explain their findings to as many people as they can. It is important that all this are documented. Comelec may ignore it but the facts are there to refer to in a future time for redress and more importantly when we are made to account for in history.

They begin their report with the acknowledgement that there has been cheating in elections since “our republic was established up to the present time.”

The May 2013 synchronized presidential and local elections was no exception even if it was done through an automatic electoral system.  The fraud came from the use of pre-programmed machines itself.

It was expected that an automated electoral system would be the answer to fraud and cheating in manual elections. That is why very few are inclined to believe that the machine-generated election can be manipulated. On the contrary, the machines and the programming were used to carry out fraud on a wholesale basis unlike the retail fraud from manual elections.

“The authors of RA 9369 purpose was “to destroy and dismantle the COMELEC’s cheating infrastructure of the manual voting system; prevent cheating by “slow manual count” through fast transmission and canvassing of results, and to provide provisions to ensure the accuracy of vote counts and authenticity of Election Returns. None of this was accomplished.

Six safeguards were to be set up for the automated electoral system to work: Internal certification of AES, review, testing and certification of the Source Code, digital Signatures Voter-Verified Paper Audit and Verification, Random Manual Audit Prevention of Fake Ballots via lamps.

“Under the law, the COMELEC is mandated to create a Technical Evaluation Committee. Its duly is to certify, through an established international certification entity to be chosen by the Commission from the recommendations of the Advisory Council, not later than three (3) months before the date of the electoral exercise, categorically stating that the AES, including its hardware and software components, is operating properly, securely, and accurately, in accordance with the provisions of the laws.”

But according to this groups findings, as other groups have already found was that the technical evaluation Committee falsified their report:

They reported a 100% accuracy on the PCOS reading where in fact it was reported on the mock elections conducted by the TEC that 1 out of 6 marks were erroneous.

 They also reported that PCOS passed the transmission test, where in fact for the Mock elections held at UPIS, it took the PCOS 2 hours to transmit.

And lastly, on the Technical Evaluation Report, they stated and admitted that they just partially complied with the law by not fully following and observing the requirements prescribed by the Automated Election System Law. We are talking of elections and COMELEC and other government agencies are falsifying and disregarding the law.

Take the issue of the source code which directs the PCOS machines how to read votes, transmit result and tally votes.

“The Commission did not allow the political parties and candidates or their representatives, citizens’ arm or their representative to examine and test) to review the source code. If they are not hiding anything, why won’t they allow the source code to be reviewed, anyway it is prescribed in the law.”

“The election returns transmitted electronically and digitally signed shall be used as the basis for the canvassing of votes and the proclamation of a candidate.” the report adds.

In other words, without the digital signature, no election result could be considered authentic.  Therefore the result of the elections must be deemed null and void.” This is not the first group that has come out with this conclusion.

The group has additional evidence that they are not ready to release to the public at this time except to specific individuals.

But their conclusion based on their findings as with other groups is that we had failed elections. They have made it their duty to report it as widely as they can by going around schools and local  and present their findings.

They were told horrendous stories of how Comelec officials would brazenly sell their “expertise” for changing election results to losers. Indeed results favor the highest bidder. In one case, the Comelec official concerned reopened a bidding by saying that the winning bid has not  yet paid anyway. The group  described that with so much money exchanging hands for election results, it would dwarf even the Napoles pork barrel scam. More likely they think that the scam is a direct offshoot of the need to raise money to pay for winning elections.

All the reports from different groups should now be put together and collated as a single report to confirm that we had failed elections in 2010 and 2013.

Indeed the Napoles pork barrel scam could be  an offshoot of the buying and selling of election results by Comelec officials to particular candidates. When people agitate and ask that the entire government should resign for the Napoles pork barrel scam it is redundant. They are holding office illegally anyway having been elected in failed elections. Unless both issues are investigated and related together (not by the offenders and criminals please) and steps are taken to put our government system right, we cannot return to normalcy. It would be a betrayal of our responsibility as sovereign citizens if we did.

Indeed we must battle “normalcy” if it means sweeping the offences under the carpet. To accept senators  to act as judges of their peers when they have themselves been part of the corruption is an exercise of “normalcy”. Even the chairman of the blue ribbon committee investigating the Napoles pork barrel scam has  no qualms about investigating his peers as a only part of a normal day’s work at the Senate. The hypocrisy must be stopped. The times do not call for “normalcy” but for drastic radical actions.