Comelec must get rid of the PCOS machines

With the election season in full swing… beginning with the 120-day gun ban, no less than Pres. Benigno “PNoy” Aquino, III (who was earlier embroiled in that stupid non-question by the Comelec that the President was not exempted from the gun ban, but a couple of days later… reported to the public that the President by virtue of his being the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) was automatically exempted from the gun ban) now ordered an intensified campaign against loose firearms. What can I say… but way to go Mr. President…it's about time!

If at all, I'd like to point out that in Mindanao there are so many armed militias holding high-powered and obviously not registered and therefore they should be considered loose. So let's see this administration finally get into the business of disarming those armed groups roaming our countryside with impunity… the New People's Army, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the Abu Sayyaf and hundreds of political warlords many of whom are now allied with the Liberal Party (LP).

Let's see if the Philippine National Police (PNP) whose reputation unfortunately has recently been soiled with that public execution of 13 people in Atimonan, Quezon, can regain its reputation by disarming any of the armed groups that we already mentioned.

Meanwhile in the Atimonan front… it is now crystal clear that this incident was no “shootout” as earlier reported by the PNP. It is now officially an “ambush” or as I already said… a public execution. How did the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) know this? Simple… none of the guys with guns inside the vehicles were able to fire back. So once more.. Who authorized this mission? People should be held responsible for this killing because whether they were Jueteng operators or not… they are still considered innocent unless their guilt is proven beyond reasonable doubt in our courts.

The reality on the ground is… jueteng has never disappeared… whether it was under the Presidency of Pres. Joseph “Erap” Estrada or former Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and now under Pres. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino, III. We wrote in the past that the creation of the Small Town Lottery (STL) which was designed to compete with jueteng in order to eradicate it, ended with the jueteng operators using the STL as their “legal” cover. Yes, the majority… if not all of the jueteng operators became STL operators, while selling jueteng “under-the-table.”

Worst of all, since they were already considered "legitimate" they could strut about town and not hide their faces anymore unlike in the past, jueteng lords kept a very low profile. These days as that ambush showed, jueteng lords even use the police or military as their bodyguards. The Atimonan ambush had three policemen and three soldiers killed in that incident.

I dare say that Pres. PNoy ought to abolish the STL as soon-as-possible.

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Every day as elections draw nearer, it seems that the Comelec has a nonchalant attitude on our concerns about the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines, which the Automatic Election Systems (AES) Watch  and the IT folks in The Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG) have already brought into the public view how the 2010 elections were rigged. As Dr. Pablo Manalastas' of CenPEG stated, “Without the trusted build of the PCOS voting application, there is not trusted program for the PCOS, and there is not trusted election for 2013.” What can I say… but I fully concur with this observations… given the fact that I have completely lost confidence with the leadership in the Comelec.

AES also pointed out, “It is surprising that the PCOS source code (election application ballot scanning and vote country), the most important component of the trusted build process, the one that Comelec paid good money for, the most hotly contested computer program of all-was not included in the trusted build. I think there is only one reason. Smartmatic does not have the source code that will work for 2013.” Just a slight correction… it was not the Comelec who paid for that voting process… but the Filipino people.

I don't know what the Comelec plans are… but I am absolutely certain that if they insist on using Smartmatic's PCOS machines sans its source codes…then there will be total chaos and I'm not even going to guess where this scenario would lead to. I just can't wait until the Catholic Bishop's Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) comes up to meet with CenPEG, AES Watch and Tanggulang Demokrasya (TanDem) where our bishops will be given evidence of what really happened during the May 2010 elections when the PCOS machines were first used. Comelec should get rid of the PCOS.

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