Sub suspension a case of overreaction?

It’s 11 days to go until the May 13, 2013 midterm elections and things are already moving fast. But what we are getting are mixed signals from Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes, who first admitted that they still don’t have the source code, which is crucial for a reliable and honesty elections. A source code is a collection of machine readable program instructions in their original form translated into a machine readable language. The law states that the source code should be shown to all political parties for their review.

With the information given by the Comelec chairman that they don’t have a source code and it wasn’t even given by Smartmatic even during the May 2010 elections, the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPeg) announced that a lack of the source code would nullify the results of the elections. Including the May 2010 polls? In response, Brillantes said, “If there is no source code, yes, the elections will be null and void. But the problem is, we have the source code. Who says there is no source code?”

It is crystal clear to me that the Comelec chairman is playing games with the Filipino people. His latest announcement last Monday that Comelec had the source code maybe comforting, for as long as all political parties get to see it and review it. Right now we are taking the Comelec chairman’s word that the source code has been properly reviewed by third-party information technology firm, SLI Global Solutions. But there is a snag. SLI’s certification papers have yet to be released by the source code owner Dominion Voting Systems.

At this point, I’m giving the Comelec one week before the elections to produce the certification. That’s on May 6. I’m betting that Dominion Voting Systems would never give out the certification for SLI Global Solutions because of their legal battle against Smartmatic. So the big question people want to know is, what happens when the Comelec cannot produce the source code? Will they bite the proverbial bullet and shift to a manual count? This is the cliffhanger question Filipinos are waiting for.

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I was supposed to take a ride on that Yellow Submarine for this weekend, because riding on board a submarine is one of my priorities in my bucket list. But suddenly Lapu-Lapu City Mayor Paz Radaza suspended their operations because of those video reports that the sub had hit a coral reef.

I would like to believe that the video showed that this submarine may have accidentally “bumped” into a coral reef. However, this incident is totally different from what happened to the USS Guardian or that Chinese fishing vessel that got stuck and grounded in the Tubbataha Reef, which is considered a World Heritage site.

If you ask me, Mayor Radaza may just be a bit overreacting here. Perhaps she is still drunk with victory over that diaper ad that was recently stopped from showing on TV. While I may agree with the mayor on that issue, however I didn’t write about it for the simple reason that this is happening right in the middle of the election campaign and tongues are wagging that stopping that ad could just be another “political collection” expedition, which is very common during the election season.

Mind you, I wasn’t one of the media men invited to ride that sub so I owe them nothing. But let me tell you clearly that this submarine has become Cebu’s latest tourist attraction. Frankly speaking, if Cebu has lost its tourism luster to Camsur, it is because we really didn’t have anything new to offer. Truth is, Cebu’s tourism has already evolved and matured. It is not enough for tourists who come to Cebu to be on our beaches… they must offer something unique and what could be more unique than a submarine! 

So why has Mayor Radaza suspended the operations of the sub? Will the City of Lapu-Lapu or the Department of Natural Resources and Environment (DENR) slap a penalty to the owners of the sub just like what they did against the USS Guardian? I think not. That sub may have nudged a small part of the coral reef in Mactan, but I don’t think that it made a huge damage the way that the USS Guardian did in Tubbataha.

If Lapu-Lapu City officials truly care about the environment, I would like to ask Mayor Radaza what she is doing to the almost daily dynamite fishing happening around Mactan that has apparently never been stopped by the Lapu-Lapu City government. I have a lot of friends in Mactan who tell me that the dynamite fishing goes on under the “protection” of the powers that be. So now…who’s in power in Lapu-Lapu City? At this point, Mayor Radaza ought to reconsider her decision for the sake of our tourism growth. She shouldn’t be overreacting over that simple “bump,” which I’m sure that the sub captain never wanted to happen to his sub.

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