With overwhelming votes, the House of Representatives approved to impeach Vice President Sara Duterte literally at the eleventh hour before they adjourned sine die last Wednesday. But even after immediate transmittal of the approved Articles of Impeachment to the Upper Chamber, the 24 senators likewise adjourned that same night without mention of the Senate Secretariat receiving these documents before the last hours of their session day.
Both chambers of the 19th Congress adjourned to allow many of the lawmakers to campaign for their respective candidacies in the coming May 12 national and local elections. Now that the impeachment complaints have been officially elevated to the Upper Chamber, all the incumbent senators will sit as members of the impeachment court that will try to convict or exonerate the Vice President.
Six of the senators are up for re-election. Another six of them are graduating from their second and last term of office. According to the approved legislative calendar, the outgoing Congress will resume sessions on June 2. This is after the mid-term elections and before the present Congress bows out in their third and last regular session on June 30 this year.
At a press conference in Malacañang Palace yesterday, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (PBBM) conceded he can call for special sessions of Congress if only to give due course to the impeachment trial. That is if both Senate President Francis Escudero and Speaker Martin Romualdez recommend to the President to call for special sessions of Congress.
Repeating several times he had nothing to do with the possible ouster move against VP Duterte, the Chief Executive repeatedly underscored the impeachment process gained a life of its own. Informed by his eldest son, Ilocos Norte Rep. Sandro Marcos, before the House approval of the Impeachment Resolution, PBBM admitted he did not lift a finger to stop the process initiated by groups which he cited were not even his administration allies in Congress.
As President, he stressed, he cannot stop the mandated legislative process spelled out in our country’s 1987 Constitution. After all, then as senator, PBBM once sat in the Senate impeachment trial in 1999 against former president Joseph Estrada. Though cut short by the walkout of the House prosecution panel, Mr. Estrada was subsequently removed from office during the EDSA-2 people power that installed then vice president and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Incidentally, Mrs. Arroyo, a known ally of VP Sara, was one of the non-signers of the House impeachment resolution. Actually, there were 240 out of 307 House members who signed, less one with the demise of Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman last week. However, only 215 signatories were accepted who were physically present at the House voting. The 25 others who sent electronic signatures were removed. But still, almost two-thirds, not just one-third or the minimum number of signatories, carried the impeachment process to full throttle going to the Senate.
But even with the impeachment process taking place, Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman George Erwin Garcia declared there is no stopping the May 12 midterm elections from proceeding. Learning from lessons of the past, Garcia explained in our Kapihan sa Manila Bay news forum last Wednesday the various safeguard measures that the Comelec has undertaken to conduct the national and local elections in the face of potential trouble-makers like cyberattacks aimed at disturbing the holding of the upcoming electoral exercise.
Using the newest automated election system (AES) supplied by Miru Systems of South Korea, Garcia explained, the Comelec leased the supply of the automated counting machines (ACMs) on “stand-alone” system that is not connected or attached to any other computer machines. The AES was first introduced in our country during the May 2010 presidential elections.
Modernizing our previous manual electoral process, the first AES adopted used the precinct count optical scanning (PCOS) machines procured from Smartmatic Inc. Through the years, however, the poll body’s website has become the most favorite playing ground for online hackers and other cyber intruders.
Assisted by other government agencies led by the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), Garcia disclosed the additional activities of the Comelec to sign memoranda of agreement or understanding with TikTok, Meta, Google and other online social media platforms to help guard against cyberattacks.
He recalled when the Comelec fell victim to the most serious data breach a few weeks before the AES of the May 2016 presidential elections. On March 27, 2016, hackers under the banner “Anonymous Philippines” hacked into and defaced the Comelec website. The hackers left a message calling for tighter security measures on the vote counting machines (VCM), which Smartmatic rebranded from its controversy-marred PCOS machines, to be used during the 2016 elections.
Considered as the biggest private data leak in Philippine history, the Comelec website was temporarily taken down with the assistance of the US Department of Justice. The originating domain of the hackers was bought from a US-based web hosting company. But, as it turned out, the website itself was found to be hosted in Russia.
Fast forward to the present. Garcia revealed a staggering 35 million attempts to hack, deface and other cyberattacks were launched against the poll body’s website before, during and after the May 2022 presidential elections. Since the Comelec started preparations for this year’s midterm elections, there have been an average of 400,000 attempts made each month against the Comelec website, he noted.
Since none of these attempts succeeded, Garcia echoed the confidence of the poll body to ward off any renewed and continuing attempts by hackers, hacktivists, crackers, cyberpunks, geeks, techies, technocrats, gearheads, technophiles, phishers and whatever they may be called.
“The Comelec has the widest data in the Philippines,” Garcia cited.
For one, Garcia pointed out, the Comelec possesses all the private information about the age, birthdays, birthplace, etc. of 68 million registered voters stored in the data bank of the poll body.
More concerned than being proud about it, the veteran election lawyer and now incumbent Comelec Chairman described the poll body’s website as the “prized trophy” for online hackers and other cyber intruders.
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