Will PCOS fraud evidence be destroyed? The never ending peace talks

KUALA LUMPUR — I’m still here and missing all the happenings in Manila. The big event here as far as the Philippines is concerned (and not of much interest either or big in the newspapers) is the never-ending peace talks between GPH and the MILF. According to my sources on reading the joint statement by the two panels, first round goes to the MILF. It had been expected that Datuk Othman bin Abd Razak would have been out of the negotiations because of his perceived partiality to MILF, but it seems nothing has changed. He is still “mediating,” despite GPH complaints in the previous government.

The talk is he would stay for another three meetings before he is removed. The same source said the Philippine government also blinked with the terms of reference of the International Monitoring team whose role has been extended for another 12 months. Some observers were not optimistic about the pace of the peace talks and see it merely as more of the same.

Much of the substantial work had been accomplished by previous talks with the MILF coming down to a federalized state instead of independence.

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Those who think that the citizens’ protests of the May 10 automated elections are giving up the ship are sadly mistaken. The more officialdom and media stonewall their legitimate requests the more they are pushed to fight for it.

I received a copy of their letter regarding the transfer of the disputed 60 PCOS machines to the Comelec. Originally, it was supposed to have been transferred to Smartmatics. What!?! This is too much. These machines and how they were used is exactly what is being protested. This is a blatant demonstration of how citizens with rightful complaints in the Philippines are treated — so shabbily.

The group protested the transfer but at presstime I do not know if election officials bothered to even read the letter.

The lack of outrage among a wider public in something as significant as an election under question is ominous. The question remains. Just how did the Smartmatic-Comelec use the PCOS machines in the last elections to favor particular candidates.

Rene Azurin, a columnist for Business World who has been following up the issue said it bluntly “maybe we should, instead of filing to declare Comelec not just in contempt, but just contemptible.”

“Even with the Supreme Court’s explicit rulings in the cases against Comelec filed separately by CenPEG and Mr. Guingona, the Comelec “dilly dallied, stonewalled, and subsequently just refused” to comply with those rulings. According to CenPEG, all its requests “were denied outrightly [sic] by the Comelec — with nary a word of explanation.” CenPEG correctly points out that this behavior is completely “contrary to the ethics of public service.

“Mr. Guingona and CenPEG declared, “We are deeply disturbed by the Comelec’s intransigence not only in complying with the letter and intent of the Supreme Court rulings but in consistently refusing to disclose public information vital to an independent assessment of the automated elections, which is a citizens’ right under the constitutional provision of right to public information.

Mr. Guingona and CenPEG pointedly asked, “What is Comelec hiding?”

“I believe that Comelec allowed its Venezuelan supplier Smartmatic to supply PCOS voting machines with a non-specification (and unauthorized) “open” console port so that malicious dagdag-bawas code could be easily introduced into those machines and so that election results and audit logs could be easily tampered with by any itinerant alchemist with a laptop. I believe that Comelec unilaterally discarded the digital signatures requirement stipulated in the automated election law so that bogus election results could be transmitted to the canvassing servers from machines that could stay anonymous — like, perhaps, the 65 vagrant PCOS machines discovered in a house in Antipolo — thereby leaving no auditable trail. I believe that CenPEG — which had been studiously observing every step of the election automation process from its beginning some two years ago — showed compelling evidence of the tampering of election results when it presented in a public forum ‘erroneous COCs [certificates of canvass] in at least 57 provinces and cities’, ‘mismatched time and date stamps on all PCOS machines,’ ‘discrepancies in audit logs,’ ‘unexplained stoppage of transmission at certain hours,’ inconsistent ‘canvassing print logs’, and significant differences in the ‘total number of voters and votes cast’ (when taken variously at the municipal, provincial, and national levels).

“I believe that a foreign entity was a key participant, orchestrator even, in what is simply the latest mockery of our so-called ‘democratic’ processes,” writes Azurin.

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Last Friday I met up with some young Filipinos in Berjaya Times Square. They were part of a scholarship program and employment in the many hotels and companies of Berjaya. This was one of the last projects of former PCSO director Manoling Morato. The initiative came from Tan Sri Dato Seri Vincent Tan Chee Yioun, founder, chairman and CEO of Berjaya Corporation Berhad. The Malaysians would train as many poor Filipinos sent by Morato to qualify in hotels, tourism, culinary arts etc. The original agreement was for PCSO to shoulder a token sum for the students so it becomes a joint venture. The students are culled from the poorest Filipino families who will then move on to teach what they learn here.

Manoling would be happy to know that even if the Philippines will not now be able to do its part, Mr. Kwong Lim said the project would continue as a corporate social responsibility of Berjaya. The company owns some very familiar names in Manila - Wendy’s, Kenny Rogers, Krispy Crème and Papa Jones (new pizza venture in Robinsons among hotels, golf courses bookstores etc.) I was pleasantly surprised to learn they owned Friendster and part of Facebook as well.

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Shift in sport, shift in government. Yes, I knew something strange and new was happening to the Philippines, despite the bad news rammed into our brains by bad media. Who would have thought that football, a game Filipinos excelled in during the Spanish period would return after many years in the doldrums of American basketball, a game they cannot hope to win in international competition. But Filipino football is back as a national sport, compete internationally.  

They were great. I may have missed the Azkal victory in Bacolod but I was cheering away from home. In past articles, I had written about a Filipino renaissance happening in other fields as well by returning to roots when we were ourselves, aspiring to be champions. Is this the beginning of what my facebook friend Orion, predicted in his essay “Shift in Sports, Shift in Government?”