Smartmatic's election

In 2004 and 2007 it is alleged that in the manual counting, some candidates got more votes than they should have. The candidates cheated. The method of cheating had a name — dagdag bawas. What is not said is that this was happening long before 2004 and 2007.

Nevertheless, former President GMA is blamed for cheating in those elections as if the cheating happened only then. The truth is it was happening in every election since Marcos but we cast a blind eye to it. It was endemic to our political system. Dagdag bawas is well known among election operators.

The manual counting of a national election passing through several levels laid the system open to manipulating the numbers. It had become so alarming that concerned officials were prompted to fast track a computerized electoral system in time for 2010. Unfortunately what we got was a computerized but flawed electoral system. It may look like well if there was cheating in 2004 and 2007 what is the beef if there was cheating in 2010? There is a whale of a difference.

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An alliance of civil society and civic organization leaders have banded together to keep talking about Smartmatic-PCOS operations to know exactly what happened.

The group, Tandem held a forum at the Club Filipino last week to enumerate the flaws in the Smartmatic-PCOS electoral system. This is not the first time that some of these flaws have been exposed. The trouble is these are being ignored. So I don’t blame them if they insist on being listened to.

Indeed there is obvious stonewalling going on that makes one wonder if there is a conspiracy to turn a blind eye to it by several sectors including mainstream media. You’d think that if cheating in 2004 and 2007 elections make the front pages why not the 2010 elections that are more serious. The inference of investigations on 2010 being carried out today is that the entire electoral system was compromised.

Here is the statement that the group sent to this column.

“Herminigildo Estrella Jr. in his presentation, said the provisions of the Election Law in the voting was either not followed, disabled or simply covered-up.

 “With the PCOS (precinct count optical scan) ballot scanning feature not working and the substitute hand-held scanners not used, voters have no way of knowing whether his vote is being read by the machine,” Estrella noted.

Worse, Estrella said, Comelec violated Republic Act 9369 or the Automated Election Law when it disregarded the use of digital signatures in the transmission of the election results.

 “The primary feature of a digital signature is to determine the authenticity and verifiability of the returns from the precincts. So, that’s why the Comelec specified it in its contract with Smartmatic,” said Estrella, adding the use of the digital signature was required by both the Election Law and e-Commerce Law.

 “However, the Comelec, in March 4, 2010, in its Resolution 8786 decided to forego the use of digital signatures,” he added.

 “As a result, election returns, statement of votes in the municipalities, provinces and national and the corresponding certificates of canvas have no digital signatures,” Estrella, an IT expert, stressed.

“So how sure are we the election results that were being canvassed were authentic?”

“So, there is a great possibility the election results was compromised,” the IT expert averred.

But the worst anomaly in the 2010 elections, Estrella said is when Comelec delegated its exclusive grant of powers by the Constitution to a private, foreign company.

 “The Constitution provides no authority for the Comelec to delegate its powers to any agency or instrumentality of the government, much less to any private person. It has the sole accountability arising from the exercise of its powers,” Estrella explained.

 “Thus, it is derogation of its constitutional mandate when the Comelec, through the contract, outsourced the conduct of the Philippine electoral system, including the counting, consolidating and canvassing of votes,” the IT expert averred.

At best, Estrella said, the Comelec performed a subsidiary role to Smartmatic in the elections, transforming itself into a secretariat of Smartmatic, “which in consequence has aggrandized the functions and powers of the Comelec under the Constitution.”

 “The entire 2010 elections were conducted not under the Constitution, they were held under the contract with Smartmatic,” Estrella said.

 “They stand together with the election results as the product of usurpation of Comelec’s constitutional responsibility by Smartmatic.”

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In 2004 and 2007, there may have been fraud but people voted and however flawed because of dagdag-bawas, their votes were counted. There was a consonance between the voter who was identifiable with the vote he cast.

In 2010 it was not the people that voted. It was the machines that voted and counted. How else can one explain why votes from Bolivian election were found in machines in Mindanao? That is why people find it very hard to accept the 2010 election as more and more evidence are unearthed to show there was only machination through machines (excuse the pun). It was wholesale cheating. Unfortunately, there is a conspiracy to keep it out of the public consciousness including media. Yet this is one of the more important if not the most important political issue of today. Filipinos have been disenfranchised and there seems nothing they can do about it. Concerned citizens are worried that this would happen again in future elections. They ought to do something. Aren’t they sovereign?

Given what Tandem says happened and questions hanging over its constitutionality, it is the duty of sovereign citizens to withhold the electoral mandate of Comelec if it will pass this on to Smartmatic-PCOS, a private group known the world over as in the business of buying and selling electoral systems.

In 2010 there were may have been winners and losers but it was not an election and therefore no poll results. For an election to be valid, it must reflect the will of the people and their sovereignty expressed through their votes. But where did the people’s votes in 2010 go? Voters and their votes were disjointed by the Smartmatic-PCOS electoral system. Did we have an election?