Why Comelec shouldn’t sell the PCOS machines

A week ago, fellow STAR columnist Federico Pascual warned us through his column “Postscript” about a major issue that slipped our minds about the sale of the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) by the Commission on Elections (Comelec). Indeed, we read that report by the Comelec was going to sell those confounded Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS). If there is any issue that’s waiting the calls for Justice… it is how the manipulators behind those PCOS machines manipulated the 2013 elections which Ateneo IT Prof. Alex Muga discovered as the 60% for the Liberal Party (LP) 30% for the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) and 10% for the rest.

That was the scenario that allowed the Liberal Party (LP) to garner the majority in the House of Representatives and even in many local government units (LGUs). The Cebu gubernatorial election could be a question of 60-30-10. But how can we look into this if the Comelec refuses to have the PCOS machines checked? But now even the Comelec has openly admitted that 10,000 PCOS machines did not transmit many votes. Now that’s if we take the word of the Comelec. But I suspect that the figures are very much higher than they admit it to be.

However there was a glitch in the PCOS in Cebu City, which allowed the non-LP Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama to win big against the supposedly unbeatable LP bet former Mayor Tomas Osmeña, who no doubt earned points from the 60-30-10 system. However I reckon that Mayor Rama won a landslide victory over Osmeña despite his 60% advantage, which was not enough to assure him of his victory. But his wife, Councilor Margot Osmeña won as the top LP Councilor for the South of Cebu City.

Anyway as Pascual pointed out, “The business groups behind the Comelec must be a bunch of smart, lucky people. Having earned millions when the Comelec leased the PCOS machines in 2010 and then earned more millions when it purchased the same old equipment in 2013, now the smart operators want to resell them — presumably to make more millions.” God forbid that the Comelec would be allowed to get away with selling those PCOS machines!

I recall asking the Office of the Ombudsman to conduct a lifestyle check on Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes and the Comelec Commissioners but it fell on deaf ears. I have no doubt that for as long as President Benigno “P-Noy” Aquino III is President, we can never get justice and run after the crooks in the Comelec to get into the bottom of this cheating system that is the PCOS machines used in the elections of 2010 and 2013. Perhaps after President Aquino exits from Malacañang, we can create a truth commission and really get into the bottom of this cheating mess.

This is why I quoted Pascual’s column today because he is right when he said that selling the PCOS machines “is a neat way of finally getting rid of part of the evidence of alleged massive automated manipulation of elections. The machines have actually been tinkered or tampered with after their use in May 2013 compromising their value as evidence of electoral fraud. That should not have been allowed.” Before the May 2013 elections, we’ve written numerous columns of a possible fraud, which Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes totally ignored with the support of the Yellow media. But as the Automated Elections System (AES) watch has already proven…fraud was committed.

Again allow me to point out to our readers that the 1986 EDSA Revolt may have begun with the assassination of the late Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., but that took three more years. But what really triggered the mass of indignant people to go to EDSA were those computer programmers who were so disgusted that when they were asked to change the results of the Presidential race, they literally walked out of the PICC and the rest is history.

But in 1986 computers were at its infancy and humans were needed to change the results of the elections. Today, even your Smart cellphone has more gigabytes in power than your old personal computer (PC), but whether you believe it or not, computers no matter how smart or powerful, they still need to be tweaked in order to achieve a desired result. Meaning… some hired crook working with the Comelec must have put in the binary codes that would tell the PCOS machines that no matter how the voter voted for a candidate, the result would always come to 60-30-10.

I don’t know what is happening to the Filipino people these days. While it took us 14 years to get rid of the conjugal Marcos (whom we said was Ali Baba) dictatorship, apparently it is now taking us 28 years to get rid of the 40 thieves (represented by the current political elite that hijacked the EDSA Revolt from the hands of the Filipino people) who continue to steal the people’s money from the national coffers in what many call the systematic plunder through the now unlamented Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) or pork barrel. When will we finally wake up??

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