OCCUPY COMELEC! What will it take to stop this mad drive for rotten elections? This is now the central question. We are all committed to a functioning constitutional democratic order. Which means, among other things, regular and genuinely free elections. But the 2010 and 2013 national elections, which produced the criminal syndicate now running the Aquino government, made a complete farce of our electoral process, and an absolute fool of every Filipino voter. In both instances, the Venezuelan private company Smartmatic, which had no mandate to conduct elections, conducted the elections on behalf of the Commission on Elections, which alone has the constitutional mandate to conduct elections. It used the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machine, after the Comelec had llegally divested it of all its safety features and accuracy mechanisms. It was a grand electoral swindle. And it was there for all to see and suffer. But for all sorts of no good reasons, the less than-computer-literate public accepted it as a “real boon” from the PCOS machines. They were ecstatic that they could have the election results in just a few days, whereas it used to take them months before the shift to automated voting. The “quick results” barred people from asking whether or not they were, in fact, real. And they saw nothing wrong when US Ambassador Harry Thomas and a few other Western ambassadors formally “recognized” B. S. Aquino 3rd as “president-elect” even before the Congress could complete the official tabulation. In 2010, some unsung patriots tried to question the conduct and results of the elections. A couple of them went through the motions of filing a petition before the Supreme Court seeking to invalidate the entire flawed process. This was long before the coalition of university-based computer programmers, technicians and scientists took the 2010 and 2013 elections apart and showed that no real elections had taken place on either occasion. But the petition failed to gain the attention it deserved, even from the social media or any of the small independent newspapers. This was more than deeply disturbing. But I could understand why it failed to gain traction anywhere. My long education in ethics has taught me that one should be prepared to tolerate evil if and when the alternative to it could cause a far greater evil. The Justices were apparently guided by the same principle. One could not imagine what monumental crisis would have ensued had the Court invalidated the entire election, and B. S. 3rd simply defied the decision. Yet the regime’s inability to undo the evil it has inflicted upon the nation does not require it to perpetuate the same. Although our beloved PNoy has until now gotten away with murder, he is not obliged to add to his crime at all. His duty is to end the evil while he still can, before it completely overwhelms the nation. Regrettably, he seems determined to rush headlong in the opposite direction. Instead of excluding Smartmatic from any future election, the Comelec (as implementor of the presidential will) has decided to make its unwanted and venal presence permanent. It has decided to award a new P1.2 billion-contract to the Venezuelan company to provide the rigged and totally discredited PCOS machines all over again for use in the projected 2016 presidential elections. This is contemptuous beyond measure. It shows that what deeply ails the nation does not at all concern our beloved PNoy. As a people, we are deeply concerned about our survival as a constitutional democracy and as a God-fearing, spiritually and morally endowed nation. Our beloved PNoy on the other hand seems solely motivated by his staying as the occupying neo-colonial power. There is no common ground between the one and the other. There is no room for a compromise here. Something has got to give. The first reaction to the Smartmatic award, similar to the reaction to the insane 50-percent Metro Rail Transit 3 fare increase, has been for some people to go to the Supreme Court in the hope of stopping the evil transaction. Indeed, this is a distinct possibility, not to say probability, given the courage the High Court recently showed in striking down the pork barrel system, otherwise known as the Priority Development Assistance Fund and the Disbursement Acceleration Program, as unconstitutional, and in directing the prosecution of all those involved in the grave abuse and manipulation of the same. manilatimes.net/will-take-stop-mad-drive-rotten-elections/154082/
Posted on: Sun, 11 Jan 2015 04:33:29 +0000
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