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Opinion

The more dangerous enemy is ‘normalcy’

FROM A DISTANCE - Carmen N. Pedrosa - The Philippine Star

As each day passes, unless something more drastic takes place the anger and disappointment with the fraudulent May 13 elections will fade. Normalcy will creep in. That is the enemy — when the desire to retreat from frustration overtakes the desire to fight lawlessness against a more powerful and intransigent enemy. It is about wanting to live normally in abnormal times.

That I believe is why Comelec acted so recklessly by going ahead to proclaim winners even if more than 30% of the votes still had to be counted.  It was a pre-emption.

If winners are proclaimed no matter how and why, there is little that voters can do. Except as the presidential spokesman advised critics to “complain to the proper authorities”. There it will sink to oblivion either to be rejected or put at the bottom of the paper pile.

 With institutions disabled earlier, the statement about bringing it to the “proper authorities” from the Palace is revealing.       

The “authorities” have calculated that conscientious Filipinos will burst into protest initially but soon the desire for “normalcy” will overtake any other consideration. Sooner or later, we will turn to other things like earning a living, for one.

*      *      *

Many Filipinos thought they had voted in a normal election that was made even better because it promised quick results. If the public accepted the “success” of 2010 it can be made to accept the “success” in 2013. And how better to do this than to proclaim winners early?

But it was not a normal election.

 Filipinos did not vote. The entire nation was cheated of their right to vote. That right was removed from them and given to machines.

 No matter if this is a human right violation. No matter if it is unconstitutional. We can shout to the high heavens that the winners are fake winners. What in theory should have been the very powerful electorate was sunk into a bottomless pit.

Here is what happened: “Fifty-five million voters were cheated and 90 plus million populace were made to believe that incapable and undesirable candidates but preferred by the government in power were elected overwhelmingly by Filipinos.”

To do this an automatic electoral system, already discredited in more advanced countries, was used to perpetrate this grand deceit.

*      *      *

The popular notion is that if it comes from computers it must be accurate. Who will educate voters that computers can be made to produce according to a programmed result and is only accurate about what a programmer wants it to be accurate about.

That is why more sophisticated countries have banned automatic electoral systems.  If elections are public then everyone who votes must understand the system under which he votes without specialist knowledge. That was the decision of the Federal Court of Germany. In the last election the average voter did not know what happened to his vote or how it was counted.

What are  fake elections for? Why put up incapable leaders through PCOS elections? There are geopolitical analysts who can answer this question better than I can and I call on them to tell Filipinos what is going on.

*      *      *

Was the elections won with a programmed formula for 60-30-10 results?

It appears to be a simple formula but  enough to expose that the results were programmed. 

“On the eve of May 18, watchful netizens discovered they weren’t alone in finding an uncomfortably unnatural “60%-30%-10%” spread of votes respectively among Team PNoy, UNA and the independent candidates consistent in all vote canvassing updates by the Commission on Elections through their “transparency” server.

Dr. Lex Muga, a mathematics professor from Ateneo, first posited  the observed pattern in his Facebook wall. This was double-checked and confirmed by Rick Bahague, national coordinator of the Computer Professionals’ Union (CPU). The information spread like wildfire across Facebook and then to Twitter, and other efforts soon followed with a team discovering that the pattern was applicable on results on the regional level as well. How can distribution of votes be consistently equal in all regions?

The circumstances of the AES implementation makes it very difficult to conclude but very easy to suspect. As in its pilot implementation in 2010, no source code review was made available to genuinely independent reviewers and to all political parties. Likewise, none of the safeguards inherent in the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines or proposed by various electoral watchdogs were implemented.”

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With Comelec and the government stonewalling all protests, Filipinos are forced to internationalize the issue of failed elections in the Philippines.

The complaint to the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) of UN Commission of Human Rights is a first step. 

 Smartmatic PCOS and its reputation in other parts of the world for facilitating trumped up elections are well known. It is a business and the products they sell are flawed automatic electoral systems.

All of us have friends and relatives abroad. Let us reach out to them so the world will know what is happening to our country. We may not have been razed like some countries in the Middle East but it has the same effect — destroying a country to achieve political control. If we are not able to get fundamental justice from our own government, the only answer is to seek help from other freedom loving peoples.

In the 20th century there was no social media. In the 21st there is. We must enlist every Filipino wherever he or she can be found to join in the campaign to settle scores about the fake elections of May 13.

*      *      *

There are political dynasties in many countries including the United States. For the moment we should not let it divert us from the issue of faked elections through a foreign group, the Smartmatic-PCOS. Political dynasties while a good issue to tackle is also a useful diversion, a tactic to move away from the more important issue at hand. It happened to the Philippines in 2010 when constitutional reform was gaining headway.

The 1987 Constitution provided that political dynasties be eliminated but added the phrase “as may be provided by law” which was the hypocritical way of saying it will not be done because the dynasties come from elected members of Congress which creates the law.

Oligarchic media immediately doused water by spreading the message of honest election and called the program “Ako ang Simula.” Regretfully we found out too late that the honest election was not only dishonest, it was more than dishonest — machines effectively removed the people’s right to vote and inevitably bashed the sovereignty of the country.

 

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CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS

COMPUTER PROFESSIONALS

DR. LEX MUGA

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