The day after: It’s in God’s hands now

THE VOTE is cast. Exhale…. Let’s all settle down and allow a hush to settle softly upon us. It’s in God’s hands now.

Whatever be the outcome of what looks like a generally orderly and fair election, let’s accept it. We may know the score, more or less, by tomorrow.

May the candidates themselves set the good example to their followers: the winners humbled by victory embracing everybody as equals, and the losers rising to accept with grace the temporary setback.

But since this is the Philippines where no politician loses an election (he is only cheated), there will be the usual whining of poor losers. For a quick rebound, let’s hear and resolve these complaints in quick, sober manner within the bounds of law and reason.

With automated elections being debugged and refined continually before every election, the incidence of face-saving electoral protests could be lessened with the cooperation of enlightened judges and electoral tribunals.

There were some scattered reports yesterday of the Vote Counting Machines (VCMs) – the upgraded version of the infamous Hocus-PCOS voting machines of the 2010 and 2013 polls mismanaged by the Commission on Elections chaired by Sixto Brillantes.

As of noon, we heard over radio and TV of some 64 VCMs in different precincts reportedly malfunctioning. With 52,509 VCMs deployed throughout the archipelago under varying physical conditions, the errant machines would be .0012 percent abnormality.

To this non-techie, that .0012 percentage looks tolerable if the trouble was promptly fixed. Still, every machine that falters is a disaster to the affected parties, especially to the voter who gets to cast a vote only once every three years.

It is lamentable that with the well-publicized errors and glitches in 2010 and 2013, the Comelec still seems clueless in solving some of the problems left behind by Brillantes and his cohorts.

The VCM sitting on its pedestal with assorted individuals tinkering with it is easy to blame. It hardly occurs to most people that the problem – such as ballot rejection – could be traced to such factors as substandard paper and/or ink used for the ballot. Note how easily the ink of the marking pen seeps through to the other side.

Or it could be the unusual high temperature (weather), or, again, the human factor (inadequately trained personnel) bugging the hardware. Until our deadline, coinciding with the close of the voting, we have not heard of any complaint about the VCM software.

• It’s Duterte-Roxas-Binay in Pampanga?

AS WE write these our initial impressions, the counting of the votes has not started. Having seen major upsets in past elections, we hesitate to guess who is likely to win the top national posts this time.

As we said in the head, it is now all in God’s hands. Let’s just wait.

But we cannot help noting that in most places where we have been talking to people representing a cross-section of our multi-layered population, the presidential candidate most often mentioned as the favorite is Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte.

The same name has topped supposed surveys, but we have made it a point not to repeat and give currency to surveys in the last three weeks before an election so as not to aid attempts to create a bandwagon effect.

As we said last Sunday: An election is not a race where bettors divine which of the horses is most likely to win – and then bet (vote) on it. We are not called upon to gamble, or to jump onto a bandwagon, but to simply exercise our right of suffrage by declaring our choice for president, win or lose.

In Mabalacat City, an hour away in the northern edge of Pampanga, where we have always voted, the presidential candidates’ 1-2-3 standing, as we gathered among people we have talked with yesterday, were Duterte, followed by Mar Roxas and Jojo Binay.

It is interesting that reelectionist Gov. Lilia Pineda – a bosom friend of former President Gloria Arroyo – pledged in a recent rally to President Noynoy Aquino and Liberal Party stalwarts that Pampanga would go for Roxas and his vice presidential partner Leni Robredo.

The Pinedas have the resources and influence to deliver on that promise. But reviewing the film clip of that rally, we noticed that governor Pineda was just reading her pledge of sure-win for the Mar-Leni tandem from a codigo written for her.

• Where will the Pied Piper take us?

THE FILIPINO basked Monday in the euphoria of being a “king for a day” – never mind if the rest of the year he would be oppressed and exploited by officials who do not really care for the masses seeking liberation from a system dominated by a small ruling class.

With one man-one vote as the only formula for determining the winner in yesterday’s exercise that must have drawn an expected 75 percent of more than 55 million registered voters, even a mere plurality can produce a winner.

In pre-election surveys, Duterte the Pied Piper from Davao had been reported to have attracted some 33 percent of the voters with his tough talk about knocking down the elite ruling their lives and decentralizing the Manila-centered government.

Whether or not he can muster this magic number, which is at least 20 million, that will carry him to Malacañang will be clear by tomorrow – unless the voting and the transmission of the results in some key areas is disrupted in a big way.

* * *

ADVISORY: To access Postscript archives, go to www.manilamail.com (if necessary, copy/paste the url on your browser). Follow us on Twitter.com/@FDPascual. Email feedback to [email protected]