I sometimes wonder who or what supports Smartmatic president Cesar Flores that he should be so cocky. He was quoted in a report saying “no other bidders can participate in the bidding for an additional 23,000 machines except them.” He claims Comelec already bought 80,000 machines. Any additional machines would have to rely on Smartmatic for parts over which they have exclusive rights.
This is how a company like Smartmatic has taken over our country. They did not have to use guns or bombs. They just took over elections with machines and decide who should rule the country.
Bayanko, the crowdsourcing movement for constitutional change has called on all its members and partners to fight Smartmatic and their local partners, TIM and Comelec to resist the takeover. We are in a war for our independence and our enemy is Smartmatic machines and its unverified source code.
When the campaign against Smartmatic’s handling of the 2010 election was in full swing, I wrote about other countries and some states in the United States that did take up Smartmatic’s automated system of elections that came to grief. The insistence of Comelec and ultimately, the Aquino government, to use Smartmatic machines for the elections in 2016 is a political agenda. It is how to make sure that candidates who pay big money will win the elections by hook or crook.
Just because it is automated does not mean it reflects the votes of the citizenry. It only reflects the hidden agenda of candidates who pay to win. I think this is a good example of the truism that machines are mere instruments of the human mind.
To me the best decision on automated elections came from the Federal Court of Germany: “There is a contradiction between machines programmed in secret and the public nature of elections.”
It is not easy for voters to understand computer gobbledygook. They are easy prey to those pushing for fraudulent machine elections. In all my articles on Smartmatic PCOS, and there have been many since it was first used in 2010, I have tried to translate the technical problems in simple terms: For a vote to be completed, whether manual or automated, there are two acts, one is the vote itself and the second is how it is counted. If the vote was separated from the counting process, we did not vote.
That is what happened in May 2010. Worse, all the way through which we could prove this separation took place was closed to us until Smartmatic sued Dominion, the real owner of the software of the automated elections.
Flores’ effrontery comes from sanctions of the Aquino government and the Comelec. They have refused to get at the bottom of the elections of 2010 and 2013.
The Filipino nation must come together by using the Bayanko crowdsourcing vehicle of protest. Put your name down for No to Smartmatic in the Bayanko page in FB.
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Former House speaker Jose de Venecia gave an interesting message in his speech Asian-Latin American Ties. The speech was about the movement of power from West to East. He made the speech at the 5th Joint Session: ICAPP Standing Committee and the COPPPAL Coordinating Body; and 1st Meeting of ICAPP-COPPPAL Business Council in Mexico City last November. I have excerpted from the speech the relevant portions. De Venecia has used his talent for building coalitions honed in Philippine Congress. Without saying so, he took the participating groups closer to becoming a non-aligned global force. He said “Mexico was the perfect site for our collective effort to reinvigorate the ancient ties between the two continents.
“Our two continents – Latin America and East Asia – had been the poles of humankind’s first venture at globalization during the ‘Age of Exploration.’
From here were launched the great ocean voyages that opened the East to the Western World – 450 years ago.
And my country – the Philippines – was the eastern home-port of the legendary Acapulco-Manila galleons that for 250 years linked East Asia, Latin America, and Western Europe culturally as well as economically across the vast Pacific.
Until the eve of our own time, Spain administered its far-flung colony of Filipinas through this then-Viceroyalty of ‘New Spain,’ now Mexico.
In the process, our Philippine archipelago of 7,000 islands became Asia’s first Christian nation.
Today, that movement from West to East has reversed.
’The last Spanish-Filipino galleon sailed in 1815; trade between our two continents dwindled; and both Latin America and East Asia turned inward – each to undergo its own process of transformation.
That process of transformation continues even now. And it is changing the distribution of power in the world in an epochal way.
The center of global gravity is moving away from the Atlantic, where it has been the last 400 years – not so much because the West is weakening, either economically or militarily, as because other power centers are growing in relative strength – in Latin America, in Asia, in Africa.
The international system is growing a multi-polar — even a multi-civilizational — global balance of power. “
And since the most heavily populated and most economically weighty of the new stakeholders in the global order are Asian – China, Japan, India, South Korea, and Indonesia principal among them – the center of global gravity is tilting toward the Pacific. Some 60% of Russia is in Asia. And of course, the United States is also a Pacific power….
“By 2025, Asia should be home to three of the five largest economies. By then, China, Japan, and India will be competing with the United States and the European Union for the top honors.
What’s more, Asia’s “economic miracle” states seem close to creating a new development model — one that combines the dynamism of the market system with the long-term stability of State direction — as a workable alternative to “winner-take-all” capitalism.
By 2050, Asia could be generating 52% of global GDP, from about 20-25% in 2010. And Asia’s economic modernization will have political consequences.
Growing economic ties between developing continents that share colonial histories and foreign-policy interests will stimulate opportunities – and incentives – for political collaboration between them.
Asia’s rise opens opportunities for collaboration among the states of Africa, Asia, and Latin America in international councils - to ensure that the voices of their peoples – long muffled by colonial rule – begin to be heard, particularly on the issues of global stability, poverty, equitable global trade, and climate change.
Significantly, this BRICS bank will be based in Shanghai; and its first president will be an Indian national.”
He concluded his speech by asking for more interaction between Asian and Latin American countries with interaction on the powerful G-20 where Asia is represented by China, Japan, India, South Korea and Indonesia while Latin America is represented by Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.