Is it too late to go manual?

I love high tech… specially if it works. But high tech could be extremely frustrating too when it goes awry. As a writer, I don’t know how I ever managed to survive the years before computer word processing, e-mail and Google. But I have had a few near suicidal moments after something had gone wrong with my computer and I had somehow neglected to save a couple of hours worth of work.

Even if I resent the intrusiveness of the cell phone, I appreciate the convenience of reaching anyone in the world by voice or by text in the blink of an eye. I still remember the olden days when calling international long distance was a big event. When my eldest sister was undergoing her post graduate training at Yale Medical School, we were gathered by my Dad around the phone at an appointed time to call her. We had to go through a long distance operator who reached another operator on the other end before we can even talk to my sister.

Today, I can reach my children in different parts of the world without even having to pay local telephone companies a centavo. I have VOIP at home which gives me a Los Angeles dial tone. Or I can use the talk service of Gmail which enables me to even see my grandson across the Pacific Ocean when I talk to him about doing his homework. When my son was studying in Cambridge Business School, we talked to him via Skype with full visual in living color and best of all, for free.

I mention all these to show that I appreciate the power and convenience of technology. The quality of my life today would not be as great without the digital technology of computers and telecommunications. I know technology works but I also know technology fails… and often at the worse possible time. I know tech savvy companies take years to get their computer and telecoms technology applications running smoothly… not the few months the more or less clueless Comelec is taking to launch a nationwide system for what could be the most important election in our lifetime.

I try to ignore news reports of how the supplier of Comelec’s system for computerized elections has failed to deliver the machines on time. I shake my head upon reading or seeing news reports about how the machines that did arrive in the country are failing field tests. I get very concerned when I hear teachers who will be poll precinct officers complaining that they have not been adequately trained, if at all, on how to use these machines. I sit at the edge of my chair as news clips of the printing of the ballots convey a sense of deadline panic because they have absolutely no margin of error in timing delivery.

I have kept quiet about my fears because it seemed unpatriotic to express doubt that the Comelec can carry out this most ambitious endeavor. But the Comelec has not given me reason to be more sympathetic to their efforts to appear competent and unbiased.

The Comelec Chairman seems heroic and trustworthy. But I cannot say that of the entire commission. Recent decisions by the Comelec in those lingering electoral contests in Pampanga and Isabela confirm my fears about bias in favor of the ruling administration party. It has also refused to recognize Namfrel, the one organization with a vast experience as a Comelec citizens arm (tested against the Marcos machine) and recognized PPCRV instead, which is largely untested and not as organized for such an important task.

Could it be possible that the Comelec knows all along they will not be able to carry out a successful computerized election but is going along with the charade so that a failure of election will keep you-know-who in power? I honestly do not believe she intends to step down any time soon. She isn’t my beloved Ate Glue for nothing.

Look at it this way. Interests identified with her and her family have been busy acquiring big ticket investment assets like Petron, power plants, telecom companies and attempting to get into water and tried to get control of Meralco. All these investments require a friendly regulatory environment. What they are doing isn’t normal for a group that depends on someone who is planning to exit from power. These investments are being made by people who seem to know something we don’t know for sure or are in the realm of our worse fears.

I am not a fan of conspiracy theories but I have one anyway. What if… there is a failure of elections declared only on the national level (there will be more serious trouble if local posts are included)… The local winners are declared including the members of the lower house that will include my dear Ate Glue, now a newly minted Representative from the Second District of Pampanga.

No new senators proclaimed. No Vice President and No President proclaimed. The lower house elects you-know-who as Speaker who becomes caretaker President. In the meantime the house convenes as a constituent assembly with or without the consent of the remaining senators. A parliamentary form of government springs from the con ass, they fake a plebiscite and we have a new government with you-know-who as Prime Minister. The unproclaimed presidential election winners fade into a footnote in history.

All that can happen if those damn computers fail. And the way things seem to be going now, a significant number of them will fail. To top everything else, there may be problems with the communications system even if Globe and Smart cooperate. Remember all those smuggled jammers? We all have a good idea of who the experts in smuggling are.

I know it may be too late to go manual. But as Loida Nicolas Lewis so well expressed it in a recent conversation, knowing this could happen, are you just going to quietly proceed to the guillotine and have your head chopped off? 

Is it really too late to go manual?

Fiscal deficit

I received a copy of an interesting letter Bobby Ongpin sent Finance Secretary Teves on the deficit. Mr. Ongpin took Mr. Teves to task for the way DOF is presenting the fiscal deficit situation that “seems to focus almost always solely on the quantum of the deficit e.g. that it is almost P50 billion more than the target of P250 billion (although it is subsntantially less than what many had predicted to be about as much as P350 billion).”

 The former Marcos era DTI Chief has taken the view that more important than the deficit figure is the growth and resilience of the economy amidst the financial crisis and the natural calamities that hit us. Mr. Ongpin’s view is similar to the view taken by Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman on the fiscal deficit situation in Washington DC.

It would be desirable, Mr. Ongpin wrote, for the DOF announcements to always place the budgetary deficit “in its proper perspective e.g. that it is 3.9 percent of GDP which is not at all bad, considering that many developed countries even in Europe had budgetary deficits exceeding 10 percent of GDP. Our 2009 deficit of 3.9 percent of GDP is better than Malaysia’s 7.8 percent, Thailand’s 4.6 percent and Vietnam’s 8.3 percent. Only Indonesia at 2.3 percent and Singapore at 3.5 percent did better.”

Mr. Ongpin urged Mr. Teves and his DOF staff to take “into account the worldwide financial ‘tsunami’ that transpired in 2009 and the traumatic effect of the series of typhoons and floods that hit the Philippines, it is entirely reasonable that revenue collections will drop because corporate and individual incomes certainly were adversely affected while substantial sums for rehabilitation and repair works on the catastrophic damages caused by the calamities had to be spent by the government.”

There was no other choice, Mr. Ongpin wrote. “Thus my view is that a P298.5 billion budgetary deficit was in fact justifiable and indeed even commendable.”

You wish!

PhilStar reader Andy Miano sent this one.

It was the first Sunday of Lent and the priest was about to walk up the aisle to say Mass. He spied the commentator and told him that from then till Easter there will be no singing before the readings and Gospel. “Remember,” he said, “from now on there will be no more Gloria.”

A parishioner seated nearby butted in and said with a wicked grin, “Wow. She stepped down? She’s finally gone?”

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. This and some past columns can also be viewed at www.boochanco.com