The gathering storms

We have been duly warned about Megi, a threatening super-typhoon. Weather forecasters are keeping watch, tracing its path as it moves towards the Philippines. I thought this was an apt metaphor for another gathering storm when I received two e-mails from this column’s readers — one from Louie Tabing and group and the other from a group of concerned citizens under the umbrella of We Care Foundation.

The first comes from increasing frustration with our media, both print and broadcasting, that seems to have forgotten its public service aspect and the second from a lack of response from the Comelec to letters and petitions regarding the automated electoral system last May 10.

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Louie Tabing, just come back from China to help with community radio there has written colleagues and friends that something has to be done with our own media. He is a founder of Tambuli (Tinig ng Aming Munting Bayan Upang Umunlad Ang Maliliit or the Voice of the Community) in the Philippines. It was among the first independent community radios set up with help from UNESCO, in collaboration with DANIDA.

Community radio is one of UNESCO’s programs. The aim is “to address crucial social issues at a community level, such as poverty and social exclusion, empower marginalized rural groups and catalyze democratic processes and development efforts.”

This is an important initiative coming from a development writer with friends in UNESCO and academics from the UP. I am not surprised that his email should receive a positive response because dissatisfaction with our local media is prevalent except there has been no significant effort to correct the situation. His appeal ought to be taken up by the Filipino public whether inside or outside media who are aware of its downward spiral into irrelevance.

He was inspired by the speech of Mario Vargas Llosa, the 2010 Nobel Prize in literature and a visiting professor in the Latin American studies and creative writing programs.

“Nothing is so destabilizing for a society as the systematic distortion of reality that is the hallmark of the sensationalist media,” Llosa wrote in Unesco Courier in 1990.

Look how the networks through their popular personalities have “descended to mediocrity as they are solely motivated by a desire to dominate the market and displace commercial rivals that . . . having tragic consequences in the long term for both the cultural and democratic basis of a society (Llosa).”

Tabing asks “Don’t you feel somehow awkward that Dev Com student orgs give awards to those personalities who may actually be guilty of “a systematic distortion of reality . . . that is the hallmark of a sensationalist media (LLosa)”? Is this the case of media practitioners influencing the minds of academics? Should it not rather be that the scholars, with purer motives and with capability to analyze, serve as the guiding light of practitioners?

I cannot complain as I have received numerous citations and recognition, more than I deserve, from my college and my university. However, I often feel mortified that I belong to the industry which on the whole “destroys the fabric of society and undermines its democratic foundation (Llosa).”    

He thinks it would be a good idea to invite Llosa to the Philippines through UNESCO to step up the debate on media as public service. He also thinks and many of those who responded agreed with his suggestion that NBN and PBS be transformed to Public Service Broadcasting. Well, Tabing has kicked the dust and I think that the debate will have many followers especially after the conduct of media in the last elections.

”Can we afford to be acquiescent? I am proposing that the writings of Mario Vargas Llosa be basis for student and faculty research on how commercial media is influencing our society and likely on where our country is going with media leading us by the hand. This subject ought to be part of deep academic discussions. The academics are equipped with the capacity to objectively dissect research and expose this travesty.

We at Dev Com should not only strive for development of society. We must also fight that which works against the cause of development. As gardeners, we must not only love flowers, we must also hate weeds,” he adds.

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The other gathering storm is the citizens’ clamor for answers to questions on the conduct of the first automated election last May 10. The group has been patiently going through all the legitimate means for explanation of just how May 10 elections were conducted but so far none has been received. The inference is that the Comelec does not deem it necessary for them to answer. Neither has there been sufficient coverage from media on the implications of the discoveries made by Filipino computer experts. So they are forced now to file a Petition for Mandamus to the Supreme Court to compel Comelec for the photo images of all ballots cast per precinct in order to compare these with the proclaimed results per precinct in the last elections. 

It is a group of concerned citizens and their petition has nothing to do with who won or lost in the election but to establish the integrity of the Smartmatic automated voting system. Can it be trusted? Should we continue using their service in coming elections? We need to know the answers now, not later. The petitioners are Francisco S. Aguilar Jr., Theodore B. M. Aquino, Hermenegildo R. Estrella Jr., Ma. Salome A. Mable, Jose V. Manalad and Guillermo Santos (“Concerned Citizens”).      

The petition pleads that in implementing the automated election system COMELEC disabled various security features designed to protect the integrity of the voting and counting process.

It also complained that individual members of the board of election inspectors did not affix their digital signatures to the election return, removal of the requirement that the individual members of the board election inspectors (BEI) affix their digital signatures to the election returns. The electronic process of counting the ballots and transmitting the results were put in the total control of the private outsource service provider Smartmatic TIM Corporation (Smartmatic). In pursuing their cause through the Supreme Court, the petitioners invoke their constitutional right to information.