Conspiracy

Few were surprised when UNA spokesman JV Bautista came right out and pinned the “conspiracy” to discredit the Vice-President on presidential wannabe Mar Roxas.

Bautista identified two mining moguls and known Roxas supporters — Salvador Zamora and Eric Gutierrez — as the financiers of the demolition campaign. The two were major financiers of Roxas’ ill-fated 2010 run for the presidency and eventually for the vice-presidency — making him the only politician to have lost twice in a single election year.

According to reports that circulated last year, Gutierrez has taken into his employ former Aquino spokesman Ricky Carandang after the latter lost his Palace job for reasons no one really wants to know. Carandang, who pioneered political bullying making extensive use of social media, surely is not in Gutierrez’ fold to scrape around for nickel deposits.

Bautista produced a document showing two things: that the chopper that surveyed the alleged “Binay hacienda” from above belonged to Zamora; and that former Makati vice Mayor Ernesto Mercado, contrary to his own claims, was not on the flight manifest.

On board, instead, were operatives Bautista links to Alan Peter Cayetano. They appear to be people skilled in producing audio-visual presentations such as those presented on the floor of the Senate by Mercado and Trillianes.

The same gang must be funding Roxas’ slick political advertising, distributed through cable service operators in the Visayas and Mindanao. Mar’s electoral strategy appears to be winning big in the south and fighting even in Luzon. That was Gloria Arroyo’s successful strategy in 2004.

Zamora and Gutierrez are partners in NickelAsia, a company raking it in from open pit mining. The company built a spanking new building at the BGC that apparently has much excess space. Panfilo Lacson’s rehabilitation outfit is quartered in this building. Cayetano’s political operation is rumored to be housed in the same place, as must be Carandang’s operation.

What an interesting place this must be.

Bautista’s conspiracy theory, as he himself admits, is tough to prove. It relies on circumstantial evidence, as any conspiracy theory does.

Mar benefits from, excuse the expression, blackening Binay only if we assume a zero-sum game. A zero-sum game assumes the battle will only be between two combatants, where one’s loss will exactly be the other’s gain.

If the 2016 race becomes a multi-candidate race, like all the previous ones since 1992, then the zero-sum assumption might not work. Assuming this massively funded negative campaign manages to substantially trim Binay’s overwhelming lead in voter-preference surveys, this could actually open the door to a competitive third candidate. There is enough time for that.

With the charismatic Binay and the uncharismatic Roxas locked in mutually assured destruction, the final beneficiary could well be a viable third candidate. It is Binay’s numbers, not Roxas’, which has been keeping other players at bay.

Safeguard

The policy decision has been taken. For the 2016 elections, we will continue to use the Smartmatic PCOS system. More machines will be added and, in a number of areas, touchscreen technology will be tested.

Notwithstanding the lateness of the day, there appears to be a sustained campaign to discredit the system and move to another format for automated polls.

To be sure, numerous complaints have been lodged against the PCOS system — mainly from losing candidates in both local and national elections. Included among the complainants is Mar Roxas, who lost in his vice-presidential bid in 2010. Statisticians have questioned the highly questionable pattern of votes for senatorial candidates in the 2013 elections. One group has even put under question the validity of the results of the 2010 presidential elections, when the PCOS was first used.

None of the critics of the system, however, have produced hard evidence to prove that PCOS has been fraudulently used. Without hard evidence, for better or for worse, the PCOS system could not be indicted.

Romulo Macalintal, one of the country’s most prominent election lawyers, says that accusations of poll rigging (especially for the 2010 presidential elections) have “no factual nor legal basis.” Roxas’ own electoral protest against Binay is now considered abandoned since the former has not paid for the expenses of a recount.

All the foreign election observer missions praised the efficiency of the PCOS system. Not one of them raised the possibility of electronic fraud being committed. Minor discrepancies identified all point to human error or outright tampering and not electronic rigging of the results.

Most important, the public trusts the system. They participate in elections confident in the integrity of the automated system.

What truly undermines the case of the most vocal critics of the PCOS is that they are conflicted, being also agents for an alternative technology being peddled.

Undervalued

Citizen’s group Tariff Watch lauds the ads put out by the Department of Finance (DOF) detailing the Customs declarations of a number of key importers. That allows ordinary citizens to closely examine the valuations especially of luxury items.

Adrian Majadillas of Tariff Watch, however, urges the DOF to go beyond merely publishing the Customs declarations. Some valuations contained in the ads themselves clearly indicate faulty valuations that could be the basis for cases to be filed.

Questionable valuations are most striking in the case of luxury cars. For instance, a Mercedes Benz E63 has a declared Customs value of only P1.17 million. At the showroom of its local distributor, the car sells for about P10.5 million — or a whopping 800% of its declared value.

Between January and June this year, 1,383 luxury vehicles were imported. Compute the probable revenue loss.