Cheating in STL or via OMR is still cheating

The elections in Myanmar (Burma) is over and done with and it seems that the opposition party of Aung San Suu Kyi, the National League for Democracy (NLD), is headed for a massive landslide victory and much like what happened to us in the past with our manual elections, the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) is trying to stall the count.

At this point, we don't know whether or not the Myanmar military junta would peacefully transfer power from them to a civilian government. The Burmese people have long been under military rule and it is time for them to get a taste of civilian government. Let us hope and pray that Aung Sang Suu Kyi will take her oath as Prime Minister of Myanmar soon.

What is happening in Myanmar reminds us of the old slow elections of the past… where sometimes it took more than a month to get the vote count done. This is why the Philippines ventured into the unknown via the electronic vote counting machine. Alas from one bad election in 2007, we swung to the other extreme where thanks to the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) the speed of the vote count was so blindingly fast, no one could say with certainty that the vote count was accurate!

Then the 2013 Mid-Term elections came and after it was over and done, Ateneo IT Professor Alex Muga exposed what he calls a statistical impossibility… that the vote count was like a striped T-shirt with 60% of the vote count going to the ruling Liberal Party (LP) while 30% of the vote count went to the pseudo opposition party the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) while 10% of the vote count went to those who also ran in the elections.

Today the PCOS machines have been replaced by the Optical Mark Reader (OMR), which is still operated by that (same dog?) foreign entity, Smartmatic Inc. You may line yourself up with the current political parties or presidentiables and campaign hard for them, but we Filipinos do not know that once more we are being taken for a ride by Smartmatic, Inc. that intends to pull another fast one in the 2016 presidential elections.

At this point, we should warn all Filipino voters that if their ballots won't be counted, just like what happened in the 2010 elections between Mayor Quiño and former Mayor Gilbert Wagas and the 60%-30%-10% of the 2013 Mid-term polls… then we just might be headed for a real revolution because I doubt if this time around, the Filipino people would take the OMR results, hook, line, and sinker! So please don't say that we didn't warn you!

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The headline of the Philippine Daily Inquirer last Wednesday screamed,…"STL Operators Cheat Gov't of P50B, says NBI." This is something that we've already written about in our column in the Philippine Star sometime ago because we have heard the horror stories that the so-called "Small Town Lottery" (STL) was conceived with the singular purpose of getting rid of the jueteng or numbers game. Here in Cebu we call it "masiao."

But truth to tell, my friends in Manila told me that STL operators have cleverly used the legal STL to freely operate their jueteng operations without need to hide unlike what they did in the past. The same is true here in Cebu where masiao operators hide under the umbrella of the STL. In short, the STL did not replace the jueteng or masiao; it merely provided a legal cover for that illegal numbers game to flourish.

Perhaps because STL is already legal, we haven't heard the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) say anything against it. This is a kind of scheme born out of a noble plan, but failed miserably to curtail the evil of the numbers game. This gives a true perspective of that old proverb that declared, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions!"

This is the challenge that we should drop in front of the face of Pres. Benigno Aquino III to immediately put a halt to STL operations and order the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) to dismantle these operations and declare STL operators that continue to run their stalls as illegal. The STL debacle is another feather in the cap of Daang Matuwid, that mythical straight path that PNoy and his anointed one, Mar Roxas, continue to expound almost daily that they sound like a broken record.

Add the STL as one of the massive failures of the Aquino Regime, which has only caused a grave embarrassment to the people who do not have any need to play the numbers game. But I'll bet you that PNoy will not lift a finger in order to stop the STL simply because God has taken away even his little understanding.

Just imagine the solution to the most embarrassing incident ever to happen at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) is simply to release passengers caught with a bullet for as long as there is no gun involved. But even a simple solution has escaped the mind of Pres. Aquino.

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