Clean, credible election: Does Brillantes care?

Pleas from the President, the Vice President, and the Executive Secretary induced him to stay on as Comelec chief, Sixto Brillantes says. Ego sufficiently massaged, it seemed, he easily got over his pique with that interloping Supreme Court. He also was emboldened to forget the law in overseeing Election 2013. This showed in his series of distortions last week about the PCOS (precinct count optical scan) voting machine. Said he:

(1) No longer will he show the PCOS source code to political parties and info-technologists, even though required by law. That’s because Smartmatic of Venezuela, the Comelec’s contracted PCOS supplier, can’t produce the software. In turn, that’s because Dominion of Canada, the real owner-developer of the machine and source code, has revoked Smartmatic’s marketing license.

(2) Elections can proceed even without the source code. That trivial software is merely the human-readable instruction to enable the PCOS to accept genuine ballots, count votes, and transmit tallies. In its absence the PCOS can still run using the purely computer-readable binary code.

(3) Showing the source code is just for credibility of election results, not a legal obligation. Proof: Smartmatic didn’t give such software in the 2010 presidential elections either, yet the parties and the public accepted the results. Critics of the PCOS should just go to court if they don’t share Brillantes’s opinion.

(4) The Comelec has complied with the requisite third-party review of the source code. It paid the US firm SysTest Labs millions of dollars for the job. Just that Dominion, that pesky original creator of the PCOS hardware and software, forbids SysTest from releasing the review.

(5) The Comelec might, then again it might not, sue Smartmatic for failing to submit the source code, in breach of contract. But any decision shall come only after Election Day, May 13. Meantime, those noisy critics — puny computer experts, mathematicians, statisticians — should stand aside so eminent lawyer Brillantes can produce whatever election results.

Despite Brillantes’s muddling, however, the Election Automation Law of 2008 remains clear (full text: www.chanrobles.com/republicactno8436.htm#.UXtcQJWrafQ). Whatever automation system the Comelec procures, the balloting must be clean and credible. As insurance, the law sets safeguards. Like, the source code must be deposited at the Bangko Sentral, and shown to political parties and experts at least three months before Election Day. A third-party review must be commissioned and publicized. Those are stipulations, not suggestions as Brillantes interprets.

Without the source code and third-party review, the Comelec and Smartmatic are in violation of the law. But Brillantes seems not to mind. Crucial for him is not the correctness or acceptability of the count, but that an election is held, that’s all. Thus, his fallback on the binary code that only the PCOS can decipher, not the source code by which experts can verify a GIGO (garbage in-garbage out), or fraud.

It’s legalistic smoke screening for Brillantes to say that if no one howled against the absence of a source code in 2010, then none should howl now that it’s absent in 2013. That’s like saying the rape victim who didn’t cry out for whatever reason cannot cry if raped again.

It’s also reckless for Brillantes to tell the critic-experts to shut up if they won’t help him do as he pleases. Even neutral observers are likening the situation to buying a car or aircraft. A car buyer would peruse the specs and consult friends who know the make and model. An aircraft buyer would not wait for a crash before calling in engineers to assess a plane he’s buying. Same with computers, in this case, 82,000 PCOS units.

There’s something more basic than the source code. And that’s the automation supplier. The law states that whomever the Comelec hires must be the product developer-owner. Smartmatic is not the PCOS developer-owner; Dominion is. Brillantes cannot bring himself to acknowledge this fundamental breach.

A quick recall of events:

• Brillantes was election-lawyering for Noynoy Aquino and Jojo Binay in 2010 when the Comelec wrongfully leased 76,000 PCOS units from Smartmatic. “Wrongfully,” because the Venezuelan impostor was a mere system integrator — a middleman. Still the Comelec paid it a whopping P7.2 billion. The Comelec also hired disreputable SysTest, whose license had been suspended for two years for testing fraud.

• Enter Brillantes as Comelec chairman in January 2011. That was when his law firm was collecting P8 million from Smartmatic in behalf of a secret client. Too, the Comelec then was contemplating to buy from Smartmatic 5,000 PCOS units for P600 million for the Muslim Mindanao election (later postponed to synchronize with Election 2013). It’s unclear if Brillantes knew about Smartmatic’s con game and went along with it, or if the firm fooled him too. In March 2012 he bought Smartmatic’s 82,000 earlier leased PCOS units, for P1.8 billion.

• The following month a lawsuit in the US against Dominion blew Smartmatic’s cover. It was revealed that there was no source code in 2010, and none forthcoming in 2013. Brillantes was duty-bound to rescind the Comelec’s contract with the Venezuelan con artist. He didn’t, being already in too deep with it. And so, his legalese muddling in behalf of Smartmatic. Earlier this month he repeatedly said that his unofficial mediating of the Smartmatic-Dominion squabble would yield the source code. Last April Fools Day he announced he was 95-percent sure of getting it. But last week he said it’s not coming after all, any complaints?

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