OMR: The new collar for the PCOS machine

In two days, we will finally see who will be the major players for the 2016 Presidential elections. As of the moment, we have Vice-President Jejomar Binay, Sen. Grace Poe-Llamanzares, former Secretary Manuel “Mar” Roxas and of recent former Rep. Augusto Syjuco Jr.  I’m surprised at this time, Mr. Pascual Racuyal for the nth time has not yet decided to seek the Presidency. Ahh and yes, as of press time, Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte is still in “teka-teka” mode. But as I already wrote in this corner, he is batting for Mar Roxas. But let’s give him two more days to decide.

As for the vice presidential race, the names are already out in the open with Rep. Leni Robredo as the Liberal Party VP bet. Then there is Chiz Escudero, followed by Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano and Sen. Gregorio “Gringo” Honasan who was a “no-show” last week in Cebu for the launching of the Binay-Gringo or “Bin-Go” team up. Then there is that joker called Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV whom many people still believe has a messianic complex. That makes two military messiahs running for the VP position.

Last Saturday, Sen. Ferdinand “Bonget” Marcos Jr. threw his hat to the vice presidential ring with a stirring message “Hindi pa tapos ang rebolusyon” and that he would lead a” revolution” to bring back the country’s dignity. Hmmm if this the return of the New Society, shouldn’t we call him as the “Back to the Future” candidate? If you ask me, Sen. Marcos is the only candidate with a real motivation to fix this country… which I believe would start with the fixing first of what this nation did during the EDSA revolt. But we’ll talk more about that in the next few days.

In the meantime, I was disturbed by the headline of the Philippine STAR last Friday, which blared, ‘20 Years to hack OMRs.’ This came from Smartmatic International Corp. who apparently is still the same operator of the unlamented Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) that brought us the infamous 60%-30%-10% that Prof. Alex Muga discovered after the 2013 mid-term elections. Because of this, former Biliran Congressman Glenn Chiong has made it his lifetime mission to expose the electronic hocus-PCOS, which the Comelec has totally ignored.

Then suddenly when it won the bidding for the new vote counting machines, Smartmatic changed the name of its new electronic counting machines, calling it the Optical Mark Reader (OMR). Hmmm, if you ask me, this machine won’t be miles different from the old hocus-PCOS that we had. We call it the same dog with a new collar!

Then Smartmatic Philippines project manager Marlon Garcia brags that the encryption key is different for each unit. Nice touch Mr. Garcia. But in total honesty, we’re not afraid of any hacking incident just because China allegedly threatened to hack our elections. But that was not the issue of the hocus-PCOS machines.

The major issue with the PCOS machines is the internal of the source code, which could be preset to allow certain select candidates to win the polls. Meanwhile cases against Smartmatic are languishing in the Supreme Court and God knows what would happen in the presidential elections of 2016. This is called loading the dice in favor of pro-administration candidates belonging to the Liberal Party, which happened already in the 2013 mid-term elections.

It’s bad enough that this nation of  100-million Filipinos could not find presidential candidates with no heavy political baggage, which is why today, a great number of Filipino voters are still voting for “NOTA” aka None of the Above! Thanks to our current political setup where political parties no longer matter and we’re still stuck in the 1980s personality politics that this nation should have left behind a long, long time ago!

Meanwhile Archbishop Socrates Villegas, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) once more called upon all voters not to elect corrupt candidates. For us who are intelligent enough, this should be a “no-brainer.” Alas, the majority of our voters are poor and illiterate Filipinos who have become apathetic to our sick kind of politics. These poor people know that politicians get rich while in public office and when they learn that there is a corrupt politician seeking higher office, they look at this as an opportunity to sell their votes for a higher price.

The CBCP president said, “Pope Francis said corruption is the biggest cross that is being carried by the Filipino nation. Sinners can be forgiven but you cannot forgive the corrupt because they do not ask for forgiveness. They are not bothered by their actions. Let’s try to keep the Pope’s message in mind.” Archbishop Villegas should be chastising Smartmatic for whatever sinister plans they have to tweak the 2016 polls to favor their own “special” candidates. Cheating our elections is the worst type  of corruption and the CBCP should be wary of this and stop it from ever happening again.

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