Why is Comelec Chair Abalos ‘counting’ the votes even before May 10?

That was a stupid and dangerous statement attributed yesterday on our STAR front page yesterday to Chairman Ben Abalos of the Commission on Elections. Whaat? Did former MMDA Chairman and Mandaluyong Mayor Abalos (TRAPO, or what?) really "predict" that either President Arroyo or challenger FPJ would "win" by a margin of no more than a million votes?

What business has the Comelec’s chairman got making such statements? The Comelec’s job is to earnestly conduct the voting itself, and honestly count and tabulate the ballots after they are cast. Who does Abalos think he is: The Oracle of Delphi? (The latter place is in Greece, not n Pampanga.)

It casts a cloud on the intentions of the Comelec, already freighted with the suspicion that the electoral body will "fix" the elections in favor of you-know-who, for its head honcho to make fantastic predictions which narrow the race, at that, to only two – GMA and FPJ? What if Senator Panfilo "Ping" Lacson, or Brother Eddie Villanueva – or Raul Roco Redux suddenly streak upwards to actual victory? It’s not a two-horse race until the final minute. And certainly, the Comelec must be seen to treat every legitimate aspirant evenhandedly and fairly.

Chairman Abalos can roar, of course, that he was "misquoted".

There’s an interesting book I picked up in Hong Kong last week by Ted Thomas, entitled – naturally – I Was Misquoted. It was announced in its cover blurb as the "New Unexpurgated Edition". Ted Thomas is known in Hong Kong circles as a "broadcaster, columnist, publisher, public relations consultant and raconteur", meaning he’s done all the bad things which make media repugnant to officials, politicians, and even plain-speaking ordinary people. Mea culpa, we do err. Often outrageously. But I trust, never deliberately.

But even if Abalos were "misquoted", we can only truly say the Comelec has been acting very strangely. It still has not finalized the CVLs or certified voters’ lists which were due more than two months ago – indeed last February 10. How can the opposition then challenge the listings in court? Or even the GMA campaign camp, but I doubt the latter has any objections.

Then, where did the Comelec suddenly get 42.8 or 43 million registered voters?

And what about Abalos’ earlier assertion that the Comelec itself was planning an "early" count, a sort of unofficial quick count – so the public will know ahead of the official tabulations – how the vote is going? This is wrong. The Comelec must not have an early "unofficial" count or "quick count" of its own. This is cheating. It is "trending", or trying to condition the minds of the people who is going to be proclaimed the final "victor" by the Comelec.

And the use of those counting machines? Even in the experimental stage, the fax machines proved to be faster. Drop that perilous and evil idea immediately, Mr. Chairman. Just officially count the votes as they come in – and make sure that on Election Day, there is no tomfoolery.

The Comelec’s task is straightforward. Count the ballots. Tell us who won – without dagdag-bawas, or worse; dagdag at dagdag.

When the late Senate President Eulogio "Amang" Rodriguez, the fount of ungrammatical but serious wisdom, once asserted that "politics is addition", he didn’t mean multiplication (like the loaves and the fishes on the Mount of Beatitudes), or invention of "needed" ballots to assure the election of a favored candidate.

Abalos and his Comelec commissioners, indeed, all his regional directors, and the 750,000 public school teachers, the 800 additional workers, plus the 4,000 encoders for the "electronic transmission" of vote counts, are expected to do this – without frills, fraud, or pasikot-sikot.

I’m sure the teachers will do what’s right. Many, alas, are less sure about the ones on top. And those bozos have only themselves to blame – owing to the strange antics and weird verbosity we have been witnessing in the past few weeks.

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The "unity" talks between FPJ and Ping Lacson could not have been held yesterday – certainly not during the birthday celebration of former President Joseph Estrada. If they had been conducted yesterday, it would have appeared that Erap was "godfathering" the move – which is a no-no, absolutely.

There’s no guarantee either that they will be successfully concluded today. Yet, as GMA herself chortles, it’s important for the opposition to unite, so, she further scoffs, they can give her the required competition. La Presidenta didn’t say that in so many words, but her pious statements and that of her Spokesman, Secretary Ignacio "Toting" Bunye, implied so.

For that matter, while movie action star and KNP bet FPJ certainly is the frontrunner for the opposition, Senator Lacson – while he lags with a meager 10 percent given him by Pulse Asia – has enough clout to make a difference when push comes to shove. Lacson has a network of policemen all over the country, plus elements of the military, who are supportive of him. Even if Panday thinks that his adviser and booster, former RAMrod (and Oakwood hidden "idol"?) Senator Gregorio "Gringo" Honasan will attract military backing, he cannot discount the Ping Factor.

Then, it must be pointed out, Lacson has a "platform" which he has been pronouncing in scatter-gun fashion, with rhetorical effect, from Day One, while FPJ still smiles, mumbles, and salutes, remaining mostly a two-to-three-sentence guy, oozing sincerity but putting forward no ideas.

Even the late, great Ramon Magsaysay, who said he was "not a man of talk", but "a man of action", had memorized three slambang speeches, which he trotted out on the entablado, always careful to remember in what town he had delivered Speech 1, 2, or 3, so there would be no repetition. In Panday’s case, his critics crow (and GMA keeps on hammering away at "what’s their platform"?), the nation is still waiting for Speech Number One.

It should be axiomatic that one has to give speeches, even short punchy ones, in order to get it across that one is a person of ideas, not just karate kicks and physical double-punches. After being elected, then it’s time to stop talking and start the action.

A Poe and Ping ticket would be formidable. But then, what is going to happen to Loren? Already, Senator Loren Legarda, worriedly, is intimating that she won’t be abandoned by FPJ, and she won’t slide down. Was the "thought" father to that expression of concern? How timely or accurate is that IBON survey?

There are no happy options. But unlike marriages, which are said to be "made" in heaven (though too frequently unmade in this fickle world), political marriages are made on earth – for very earthy considerations.

If the opposition doesn’t unite, then GMA is a shoo-in for victory. This should already be apparent. Yes. It’s come to that, with just over three weeks before the Witching Hour – and perhaps "witching" is the correct word.

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The importance of police and military "support", if you’re still naïve about its implications in a Third World country, was demonstrated – according to former Agrarian Reform Secretary and a long-ago former governor of Pangasinan Conrado F. Estrella – in the 1992 elections. Those crucial polls saw General and Defense Secretary Fidel V. Ramos rise to the Presidency.

If you’ll recall, FVR (whom I had supported in a front-page editorial right here, in The Philippine STAR) captured Malacañang in a seven-man race with a vote of a scant 24.7 percent. He bested Senator Miriam Defensor- Santiago by a mere 800,000 votes. Coming in third had been former Governor and Ambassador Eduardo "Danding" Cojuangco.

The deciding factors were, in our estimation, the votes which poured in from FVR’s home province of Pangasinan, and from Pampanga, where the late Governor Bren Z. Guiao had given Ramos a "windfall" in ballots. (Pangasinan has a voting population today of 1.2 million.)

Yet, how was such an overwhelming triumph secured in Pangasinan? Because FVR was a "hometown" boy? Tata Condring Estrella recounts that suddenly, on election day, Pangasinan had found itself saturated with troops and policemen. Who had sent them? The soldiers and cops, he declared, had "prevented" the leaders of other candidates from going out to mobilize their voters, bring them to the polling precincts, or otherwise get in their ballots. Estrella recalls that he had rushed over to the Comelec headquarters in Manila to complain to then Comelec Chairman Christian Monsod – the husband, by the way, of fighting columnist and TV host Solita "Winnie" Collas-Monsod.

Chairman Monsod, cognizant of the complaints which were simultaneously coming in, had exclaimed in frustration and dismay: "Yes, I am hearing of such problems – but where will I get the policemen and soldiers to enforce our Comelec instructions?" Alas, snorts Estrella (even today), the cops and soldiers were on "the other side"!

If this really happened, I don’t have to elaborate further. You get my drift. Mind you, I didn’t say FVR – i.e., General Ramos – sent them. But if you don’t believe in coincidences you can draw your own conclusions.

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THE ROVING EYE… I must be getting cross-eyed. I got the Mass schedules wrong again, writing a.m. yesterday, instead of p.m. Finally, in embarrassment, I must announce that today’s Requiem Mass for Mrs. Marietta Guerrero-de la Haye Jousselin will be at 7 p.m. TONIGHT, at the Capilla de la Virgen, in the Santuario de San Antonio in Forbes Park. I hope those who were misled yesterday will forgive me for this second, serious lapse. Soon I will be accused of the Reagan Syndrome. Owing to advanced Alzheimer’s, former US President Ronald Reagan, once the leader of the world’s only (now embattled) Superpower, doesn’t even remember who he is. Perhaps, I’m approaching that stage.