‘No bio-no boto’ diverts issue from likely election cheating

Aw c’mon, Sec. Edwin Lacierda, call a spade a spade. You owe the country such straight talk. The youth are watching you, as Presidential Spokesman and high Malacañang official. Don’t teach them to obfuscate.

You deny that Noynoy Aquno did a “demolition job” on the four presidential contenders of his chosen Mar Roxas. You claim that he merely “compared” them to his anointed one during a forum with Filipinos in Rome last week.

Phooey to you, Lacierda! What he did was no innocent comparing, like pointing out that Roxas is, say, Visayan, while Jojo Binay is Ilocano. Or that he’s 58 years old, while Grace Poe is 47. Or that he went to business school, while Rodrigo Duterte is a law grad. Or that he is male, while Miriam Defensor Santiago is female.

No, what the President so un-presidentially did was “negative campaigning.” He snidely remarked against the advertising taglines and recent statements of the four. Although he mentioned no names, he clearly alluded to them – no need to repeat him here.

That P-Noy did that as the highest official of the land, in another country at that, and in front of overseas Filipinos eager to hear news from home, made the act a tad worse. The four were not even there to defend themselves. The term “demolition job” is appropriate.

Somebody ought to tell P-Noy to live up to his lofty title, to uplift and unify Filipinos. Negative campaigning is shallow and divisive. If he must campaign, he ought to do it during the official period, not now when partisans are engaging in premature electioneering. Did he not swear, as President, to uphold all laws, including those on elections?

“Obfuscate” is what Lacierda is doing. It means “to obscure, confuse, muddy, cloud, muddle, befuddle, befog, disguise, conceal.”

* * *

That there would be “No-El” (no elections) because of the Supreme Court’s halt of the Comelec’s “no bio-no boto” is a farce. More than an exaggeration – uncalled for, since the case is sub judice – it diverts attention from ongoing scams at the poll body.

The Comelec chairman raises the “no-el” alarm to prod the SC, by press release in lieu of in-court debate, to hurry up with the case. The SC temporarily restrained the Comelec policy while hearing the Kabataan party question of unconstitutionality. The latter seeks to void the law on compulsory biometrics ID cards for voters and the Comelec implementing rule, since the Constitution guarantees suffrage by mere Filipino citizenship, residency, right age, and no debarring criminal conviction.

There’s no deadline on the SC to rule on the matter. Even if only after the May 2016 election does it say go or no-go with biometric taking, the balloting can and must proceed.

In fact, untold millions of voters with biometrics have no ID cards, thus no proof to present at the polling precinct on Election Day. That’s because of the Comelec’s gross inefficiency in issuing the cards to those who had their biometrics taken two to five years ago. Will they be disenfranchised on Election Day? They’re told to just bring as proof the small claim stubs. Does the Comelec seriously think that people would keep such a small piece of paper – in this land of floods, storm surges, fires, earthquakes, and home break-ins?

When the Comelec first issued its “no biometrics-no voting” policy early this year, new and transferee voters crowded into its field offices to register. Old voters with biometrics rushed to the Comelec too – only to be told that their cards won’t be ready till after May 2016.

So what were the Comelec commissioners scaring them for, they asked? Dunno, the field supervisors and clerks replied.

The Kabataan says 3.4 million of the 52.2 million registered voters have yet no ID cards. The Comelec adds that another three million were unable to beat the biometrics deadline. Those figures come in handy for the PCOS poll manipulators.

That all 52.2 million voters would have no elections because 6.4 million (8.16 percent) of them have no biometric cards is unlikely. If at all, the PCOS will be made to cheat by at least that percentage. For the fraud to be difficult to detect, it must be hidden in statistics that the Comelec and PCOS supplier Smartmatic will later invent.

The voting at shopping malls is another  farce. Not only is it illegal, since the law forbids any balloting to be conducted within private premises where voters can be screened for their preferences. It also denigrates the local bal- loting, because voters at malls would be able to vote only for positions elected at large: President, VP, senator, party list. It would be impossible to have spare ballots for all 97,000 precinct clusters nationwide ready at the malls for any resident of any barangay to use.

If the voting in malls pushes through, that would be yet another good cover for wide discrepancies in votes. It would be difficult to pinpoint the areas of discrepancies, as the Comelec-Smartmatic would simply point to the “millions of voters turning out at the malls.”

All these will be in addition to the usual and other PCOS cheatings to be devised. Meanwhile, the Comelec conducted a farcical source code review without the participation of real experts in information technology and computer manipulation by insiders. Meanwhile too, the Comelec gave away by mere negotiations another plum contract to Smartmatic, in addition to the P12 billion for the lease and purchase of 97,000 PCOS units. After driving away the lower bidder on false finding of insufficient submissions, the poll agency awarded Smartmatic P507 million for the transmission of precinct results to the municipal city, provincial, and national canvassing centers. The disqualified company is one of the most sought after transmis- sion systems providers of the three major telcos. In contrast, Smartmatic failed to transmit nine percent and 24 percent of the precinct results in the 2010 and 2013 elections, respectively.

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