Tama na yang "win-win" at "covenant-covenant" ninyo, hoy!
"Win-win" merely means that the politicians will all come out winners and the people losers. Similarly, the vaunted "covenant" is the offspring of compromise born after principles are tossed out for expediency.
After days of inaction that saw the impeach-Davide ripple grow to tidal wave proportions, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo now talks grandly of a constitutional covenant, whatever she means by that.
Speaker Jose de Venecia of the House of Representatives, where the impeachment imbroglio was started by the brat pack of businessman Eduardo Cojuangco, brags that there would be a solution, a "constitutional reconciliation," in 72 hours (from Tuesday).
Is anybody out there keeping track of the many crimes being committed in the name of the Constitution?
While lawyers debated before the Supreme Court yesterday the legal twists and turns of impeachment, and their politician-clients drank to compromise, citizens got hurt in the dispersal of marchers near the SC premises.
While we are hesitant to believe that piece of good news, we hope it is true.
This claimed efficiency of the Mega Pacific counting machines provides the best argument for the Comelec not to throw away P300 million for conducting a Quick Count in addition to the official count using the same equipment.
The poll results will be known in 24 hours anyway, so why do Comelec officials insist on splurging on their own Quick Count?
If a speed count is needed by special clients, there is the old reliable Namfrel Quick Count, managed by IT volunteer experts, that could be had for free.
The Comelec plan to conduct its own parallel Quick Count is unnecessary, confusing, redundant, illegal, expensive – and suspicious.
Director Rolando Viloria, head of the DoST’s Metals Industries Research Development Center (MIRDC) who was quoted by Lazaro, pointed out however that the 100-percent rating can be assured only if the ballot is accomplished properly by the voter and if the operator feeds correctly each ballot into the counting machine.
The counting machine rejects any ballot fed incorrectly (such as if it is inverted). The operator is allowed only three tries to feed again any rejected ballot. The machine might also reject a ballot that is not properly marked or prepared by the voter.
This means that the approximately 40 million voters all over the archipelago and the thousands of personnel who will operate the sensitive counting machines will have to be trained in the new technology.
(We hope this will not result in another juicy mega-contract for a crash nationwide education program.)
The law authorizing the computerization of the elections process required that the counting machines be "stand-alone." The computers cannot be rigidly "stand-alone" if they have a communication port waiting to be used.
A cable can easily by plugged into the communication port of the machine to link it to an outside party. Through this cable, data and/or instructions can be easily sent and received to/from the machine.
Why this suspicious feature, which was not among the specifications spelled out in the law? They thought nobody would notice this seemingly inconspicuous, harmless feature?
Another problem is how to ensure that the machines will work during a power brownout and even without the cool, clean atmosphere demanded by the hardware.
(Will this require another juicy mega-contract for electric generators and the construction of dust-free, static-free and air-conditioned rooms for the computers to be set up in selected sites around the country?)
They warned of the drying up of local industries, agriculture and jobs, resulting from unjust trade, monetary and economic policies imposed on the country by global financial and trade bodies such as the World Trade Organization.
This reality has been aggravated by the other countries’ monopolistic control on technology, the dumping of excess and subsidized products and the limitations in the entry of Philippine products into their markets.