World Press Freedom Day: Still no FOI bill

Call me a Johnny come lately, but yes, I really didn't know that May 3 was dubbed as "World Press Freedom Day." Perhaps the problem here is that even the media doesn't observe World Press Freedom Day. But for whatever it is worth, the World Press Freedom Day is being observed as a reminder for all that journalists worldwide are under threat. We are harassed, attacked, detained, filed with libel cases, and worse, summarily killed. It is also a reminder that we in the media are mere messengers of events surrounding our world.

World Press Freedom Day was adopted by the United Nations way back in 1993 but as I said, even our local and national media doesn't celebrate it. This worldwide celebrated event should also remind all of us in the media of the failed 2010 election campaign of President Benigno "PNoy" Aquino III to pass the Freedom of Information Bill. This is a bill where journalists would no longer have to formally write a government agency in order to get information of that agency's daily operations.

Alas despite all the power of the Office of the President especially under PNoy where he has the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branches of the government under his pocket. Yet he failed miserably to have the FOI bill passed. This just gives you an idea that PNoy was half-hearted when he made that campaign promise. In the end, he did not vigorously pursue the FOI bill despite the pressures that many media groups and columnist made in the last five years of his presidency. But PNoy was unwavering and refused to prioritize the FOI bill. And we can only suspect that the president was hiding the shenanigans of his Daang Matuwid followers!

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Speaking of the FOI bill also means that we must vote for the best senators in the present line up. I gathered that ABS-CBN commissioned a survey on the senatoriables from February 16 to 27 from 5,200 registered voters and it seems that name recall is the order of the day with Senator Vicente "Tito" Sotto III leading the pack, followed by Senate President Franklin Drilon, Senator Ralph Recto, Serge Osmeña III, then TG Guingona III.

The next four senatoriables are Senator Francis Pangilinan, Senator Panfilo Lacson, Migz Zubiri and Richard "Dick" Gordon. They are followed by the Pacman Manny Pacquiao, Sherwin Gatchalian and Joel Villanueva. While this is the top twelve leading Senatoriables, please take note that this list was still in February this year. So allow me to come up with my own list of senatoriables that I should vote for this May 9.

Top on my list is Richard "Dick" Gordon, Migz Zubiri, Tito Sotto, Rep. Martin Romualdez, Roman Romulo, Edu Manzano, Raffy Alunan, Princess Jacel Kiram, Senator Ralph Recto and Atty. Greco Belgica, whom we owe our votes because he was responsible in filing cases against the Priority Development Assistance Fund and the Disbursement Acceleration Program which was declared as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2014.

Now, what about your list of senatoriables?

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The Commission on Elections has announced that finally the ballots to be used in the May 9 elections are now here in Cebu City, while the Optical Mark Reader or voting machines are expected to be delivered by May 5. We were told that security has been tightened so that no one would monkey with those election ballots for their nefarious ideas.

But in truth, thanks to the presentation by former Biliran Congressman Glenn Chiong who was here last Saturday to make his presentation at the Cebu Catholic Television Network about the electronic cheating imbedded in the "source code," which would follow whatever commands or instructions that would be placed inside those machines.

In the 2013 mid-term elections, the source code which was given by the Comelec under Sixto Brillantes only three days before the elections (there was no enough time for political parties to double check the source code) and it resulted in the 60-30-10, which means 60 percent for Liberal Party bets, 30 percent for UNA bets and 10 percent for others who also ran. This was discovered by Ateneo IT Professor Alex Muga who told the press that the results were statistically impossible. But was there an investigation by the Comelec on this anomaly? Nada!

We have always believed that the Comelec-Smartmatic partnership was designed to cheat the Filipino voter into believing that his votes were counted. We have proven that in the 2010 Presidential elections, the Precinct Count Optical Scan count did not match the vote count in the town of Compostela. Then in the 2013 elections, it was proven once more that the results added by the PCOS machines did not tally the ballot count. Now we can only pray that if this will happen again in the 2016 elections, the Filipino people would rise up in revolt against the cheaters of this election.

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