‘Hacking Our Democracy’ by Rene Azurin an excellent expose

MANILA, Philippines - It was “standing room only… at the Ateneo Blue Room in Rockwell,” said STAR columnist Carmen Pedrosa at the launch last week of the book Hacking our Democracy by management professor and strategy guru Dr. René Azurin. Pedrosa describes the book as an important book that explains, “why computer experts and transparent election advocates reject Smartmatic-PCOS.” With elections just around the corner, the issue of poll automation and how it is being implemented by our Commission on Elections is clearly the topic of the day.

IT industry pioneer and former Commission on Elections commissioner Gus Lagman says, “Hacking Our Democracy is a comprehensive commentary on how the Commission on Elections’ unreasonable insistence on a flawed automated election system supplied by foreign reseller Smartmatic is causing possibly irreparable damage to the Philippines’ election system. Written in elegant language laced with patriotic fervor, this book offers an excellent exposition of the technical and other issues surrounding the subject of automated polls. Every truly concerned citizen should read it.”

Ateneo computer science professor Dr. Pablo Manalastas says that Azurin’s book “offers a critical, incisive analysis of the various IT issues that affect our automated elections.” A close observer of the conduct of the 2010 polls and the preparations for the upcoming 2013 polls, Manalastas notes, “In the implementation of our Automated Election Law (R.A. 9369), many of the important provisions that have to do with ensuring the accuracy of vote counts and the authenticity of election documents were totally ignored by the Commission on Elections.” His endorsement of Azurin’s book is unequivocal: “I highly recommend the book for personal and group study so that, individually and collectively, we voters may understand the issues involved and take appropriate action.”

With election cheating a perennial feature of Philippine elections, BusinessWorld publisher and Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility director Vergel Santos considers the book “the most critical effort taken against any attempt to hijack the vote this time around.” Which, remarked veteran journalist Santos, “could be decisively tragic, since at stake here is the very thing that makes or unmakes a democracy — the free vote.”

Of its author, René Azurin, Santos describes him as “one of the best rounded practicing intellectuals around. That’s why I don’t understand why he should not be listened to, as he is not listened to, most scandalously, by certain mere lay minds whose appointments to office are no more than an indication, not any definite assurance, of suitable specialist capacity.”