Who is afraid of manual vote count?
The Commission on Elections last week warned of a possible return to manual elections following the Supreme Court's temporary restraining order against the P268.8 million extended contract with Smartmatic-Total Information Management which stopped this "midnight" appointment by outgoing Comelec chairman Sixto Brillantes. Thanks to a vigilant SC, there is some hope that we would finally have clean and honest elections in the 2016 elections even if we used a manual vote count.
This brings us to the question — who is afraid of manual elections? This is something that we have been doing in this country since time immemorial, until the Comelec found a better way to count the vote but at the expense of the Filipino's right to suffrage because thanks to the Precinct Count Optical Scan as no one can tell whether we actually voted or not. Worse of all, the Comelec has proven to us in so many instances that they have been used by their political patrons to cheat the elections. Let me count the ways as our evidence of this cheating.
In February 1986, at least some 30 computer programmers of the Comelec based at the Philippine International Convention Center walked out of the count because their higher bosses in the Comelec told them to cheat for President Ferdinand Marcos. Yes, that incident triggered the EDSA Revolt of 1986 and put President Corazon Aquino as president when the Marcoses fled to Hawaii. But then when she was in power, Tita Cory did not lift a finger to bring to justice the cheats of the Comelec.
We knew what happened in 2004 elections, when then president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo called Comelec Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano in the famous "Hello Garci" scandal where she purportedly asked him about the results of the polls in Maguindanao. Again, if there were cases filed in that incident. No one has been sent to jail for cheating.
Then came the Automate Election System watchdog of professional IT computer programmers who discovered how the Comelec and Smartmatic misused the PCOS machines to electronically elect our current political leaders. We have proven how the PCOS machines failed in the town of Compostela where then mayor Gilbert Wagas apparently won over Mayor Quiño, when the ballot boxes were opened by order of the court. So do we need more evidences? If you want more, just check what happened in Biliran Island and in Tarlac with presidential aunt former representative Margarita "Tingting" Cojuangco and she will give you her sob story.
So again we ask, who's afraid of manual vote counting for the 2016 elections? Let me point it out again to you that if someone wants to cheat in the manual counting, you need literally an army of men and women to print illegal ballots and get these people to sign each and every ballot. When that is done, another group has to steal those ballot boxes so that they would remove its contents and stuff it with their own ballots. This has happened so many times in the past but it may have upset the elections especially when the race is tight. But in today's times when people have cellphones with cameras, this is difficult to do without being caught in the act.
But when the Comelec used the PCOS machines, the vote count was so much quicker than the old manual counting system. But in the end, the Comelec en banc removed the safeguards that are part and parcel of the law that mandated the electronic voting. Why did the Comelec remove those safeguards? Why don't you ask the former Comelec chairman Sixto Brillantes, who was once the lawyer of the Liberal Party.
This is what Daang Matuwid is all about — putting their lawyer as head of the Comelec. You can bet that Brillantes would be partial to Liberal Party members and this is why Professor Alex Muga, IT Professor of the Ateneo University discovered the now famous 60%-30%-10% statistical ratios that was the result of the 2013 elections, which purports 60% went to Liberal Party candidates, while 30% went to UNA candidates and 10% went to those who also ran under political parties not allied to the two big national parties.
This is why we need to totally investigate the Comelec and Smartmatic for their foolery during the 2010 and 2013 elections. Remember the Comelec is duty bound to give our people a fair, clean and honest elections. But when the questions about the electronic cheating were discovered, there was no senate or congressional investigations. It was perhaps because the people involved could be unseated if the allegations of a massive electronic cheating would be verified. If our country today is in a near failed State situation, it is because the political establishment was elected via a massive electronic vote counting machine where many errors have been revealed. That the Comelec wanted to fix these machines is more than enough proof of our allegations. So let us fix this country once and for all!
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