It is now only a month to May 10, 2013. Yet the issue of the Smartmatic-PCOS automated electoral system is unresolved. There is no solution in sight that intelligent Filipino voters can expect an honest to goodness election. But Comelec is pushing it through. We need only review the events that led to a renewal of Smartmatic-PCOS contract to see that Comelec would not have it any other way. It was Smartmatic-PCOS by hook or by crook — deadlines were ignored, unsatisfactory bidding for services pushed and most of all quibbling about a source code. And in a last minute to consolidate its determination it says it will have the source code of the Dominion automated electoral system. It was supposedly used in 2010 but no one has actually seen it up to this day except insiders. What seems inevitable is a collision course between Comelec as government and the Filipino citizenry as electorate.
Filipino NGOs concerned with elections and computer experts have responded to the crisis by taking up issues one by one. Never mind if these are not being answered. To me these issues are irrelevant if the whole exercise is unconstitutional. Comelec has turned over its mandate to safeguard our elections to a foreign group.
If this is what we face in the coming May 10 election Filipino voters say “we might as well not vote.” It would be absurd to do so. Fine. But will individual boycotts be effective? The answer is no. If the whole point of voting by machines is to hide counting then hundreds or even thousands of votes will not be missed not especially when this is accompanied by surveys that preempt who will be the winners. Surprise. Surprise. The government’s candidates are winning according to the latest surveys.
Numbers are irrelevant in the wholesale fraud by automated electoral system. And these cannot be checked or tracked down. What an irony that automation which is supposed to have guaranteed correct and accurate counting in fact led us to a trap that from hereon machines will vote instead of human beings in the Philippines.
Full Article: Collision course | Opinion, News, The Philippine Star | philstar.com.