Is Comelec in cahoots with Smartmatic?

This is the beginning of the week of the Sinulog Fiesta of Cebu and people believe that there will be lesser attendance at the week-long Sinulog Festivities because of the arrival of Pope Francis towards the end of the week. Of course, Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama hasn’t yet lost hope that somehow Pope Francis might just do an unscheduled stop to join the solemn procession for the Senyor Sto. Niño this coming Saturday, Jan. 17. But we know too well that Pope Francis is scheduled to be in Tacloban at that time.

But then who knows, the Holy Spirit might just guide Pope Francis to drop by Cebu, which is so close to Tacloban by plane. Surely by the time he flies to the Philippines… he would already have an idea that Cebu is the seat of Christianity in this part of Asia and until now, the Philippines is still considered the only Catholic nation in Asia, with the exception of East Timor.

If the hopes of Cebuanos haven’t been dimmed, it is because this Pope has proven himself that he doesn’t really follow what the Roman Curia tells him to do. In his first foreign travel as Pope, Pope Francis went to the Island of Lampedusa, which lies between Italy and Tunisia in the Mediterranean. Whenever the Pope travels out of the walls of the Vatican, it becomes a matter of the state; hence it is the Vatican State Secretary that handles his foreign travel.

But not with Pope Francis. He flew to the Island of Lampedusa secretly to meet with boat immigrants and only then did Vatican State Secretary Tarciso Bertone learned of his trip in Vatican Radio. So if God wills that Pope Francis would suddenly and unexpectedly drop by Cebu… then I would not even call it luck…but God’s will be done!

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It just makes me wonder why the Commission on Elections (Comelec) always want to figure in a controversy. A few days ago, it was said that the Comelec already gave Smartmatic the P1.2 billion deal to refurbish the broken Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines. So now, isn’t it time for us to ask questions about the reliability of the PCOS machines? They were used only in two elections… the 2010 Presidential elections and the 2013 mid-term elections and now the Philippine government would be spending P1.2 billion because those machines are broken?

Come now, if you bought a machine copier or a PC for an outrageous price… the least that we expect is some kind of reliability. But both the Comelec and Smartmatic are not transparent to the Filipino people. Of the 80,000 plus PCOS machines… they should tell us what are still serviceable and what are totally defective. We shouldn’t just take the word of the Comelec for the simple reason that I do not trust lawyers, especially the kind of Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes. This fellow isn’t a techie person, yet he knows that they have manipulated the misuse of the PCOS to the hilt.

Worse of all, the watchdogs at the Automatic Election System (AES) have already proven beyond reasonable doubt that the 2013 elections was a huge electronic dagdag-bawas and proof of this came from Ateneo IT Professor Alex Muga who discovered the 60%-30%-10% in favor of the Liberal Party (LP). But since the LP stalwarts are the beneficiaries of this cheating scheme… there has been no investigation in Congress or the Senate. In short, the political class has fooled the Filipino people and for the 2015 elections, they will fool the people again… unless we stop them!

Now it can be told that two Comelec Commissioners, notably Comm. Louie Tito Guia and Arthur Lim voted against giving Smartmatic the P300 Million negotiated contract that the Comelec Chairman recently signed. Wow! This means that this negotiated contract could not be justified. Unfortunately, the Comelec Commissioners voted 5-2 in favor of giving this negotiated contract to Smartmatic. Is Comelec in cahoots with Smartmatic?

I’m totally against Smartmatic entering into this deal for the simple reason that those PCOS machines are our evidence of their foolery and if Smartmatic gets control of those machines… then they will erase the evidence of wrong doing. I just hope that this time again, the Supreme Court will stop this nonsense by the Comelec for the sake of our democracy or what’s left of it. We can no longer rely on the LP ruling party to give the Filipino people the transparency that is need for a clean and honest elections.

This reminded me of the days of the New Society where the only political party was considered a political monolith, the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL). It was then that Pres. Ferdinand E. Marcos wanted to shed his image of being a Dictator by allowing the Legislative Branch of the government to resume its functions after Martial Law was declared in Sept.21, 1972. But while elections were allowed, however the powers that be at the KBL had the Comelec in their pockets. So it was really a transfer from one-man rule to the Dictatorship of a political party. This is what we have in our country today.

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