BS Aquino III is not president?

Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 12-19-2011 MON

Just as we said that Gloria Arroyo was not president when she was declared such in 2001 by Davide and again in 2004 by Congress (in an election where the Cojuangco-Aquino clan endorsed her wholeheartedly), so it is increasingly the case with the current Malacañang occupant.

When BS Aquino III became an accidental candidate in 2009 upon the death of his mother, Cory Aquino (an event played up to launch his campaign), the election that followed was soon hounded by suspicions on the PCOS (Precinct Count Optical Scan) machines of Smartmatic and the Commission on Election (Comelec)’s removal of vital voting safeguards. Many became aware that the UV light ballot authentication, the digital signature of the Boards of Election Inspectors (BEI), and the voter’s receipt were all done away with. Even the highly irregular recall of 76,000 CF (Compact Flash) cards just a week before the polls raised a huge red flag.

Today, many of those suspected criminal acts are now confirmed, thanks to the findings of citizens’ election watchdogs, CenPEG (Center for People Empowerment in Governance) and AES (Automated Election System) Watch, after year-long investigations.

The following conclusions, which I abridge below, have been borne out of the painstaking efforts of information technology (IT) academics and experts alike:

“On May 10, 2010, (Comelec) made available to the public the election results by precinct, town/city, district, province, and nation… (via the Web site) http://electionresults.comelec.gov.ph/. A few months later this Web site was taken down. We believe that it is government’s duty to make election data from this Web site publicly and freely available, because it is THE STORY of how the Smartmatic-Comelec partnership carried out the computerization of our elections, and whether the computerization exercise was successful or not… (As such) we have decided to publish our mirror of this Web site, so that the data are available even if they are not anymore available… (That) Web site is: http://curry.ateneo.net/~ambo/ph2010/electionresults/...

“A number of researchers have begun work on the data in this Web site (discovering) many serious errors… like: 1) 371 precinct election results with ten voters or less, when the actual number of voters is 400-1000 for each of those precincts, 2) 8,939 precincts with no data at all, indicating a possible failure of transmission of data from the precinct to Comelec, 3) of the 67,162 precinct election results which contain data, 25,530 precinct election results have missing data in one elective position, or two or three or more… (Such) missing data in one or more elective positions… is a clear indicator of the presence of serious bugs which SysTest Labs already pointed out in its certification report to Comelec, which bugs the Technical Evaluation Committee and Comelec conveniently chose to ignore…

“(The researchers cannot) stand by while Comelec makes another serious mistake in re-using the Smartmatic technology. First, Smartmatic has to install a substantial number of bug fixes in their system before they can get it to work for our elections. Second, Smartmatic cannot do these bug fixes by its lonesome self, since it does not own the technology--the copyright to the software is by Dominion Voting Systems of Canada, and Smartmatic is not allowed to make any changes in the source code, and must wait for Dominion to write the bug fixes in its own good time. Third, the PCOS hardware is not adequate to implement the security features required by RA 9369, like: 1) the requirement of digital signatures by the BEI… and 2) the planned fingerprint/biometric reader… to be installed on the PCOS…”

Kudos to experts Dr. Pablo Manalastas, Dr. Felix Muga, and Dr. Philip Truscott of the Ateneo de Manila’s computer science and mathematics departments for “trawling” data originally posted on the Comelec Web site, which had been inexplicably taken down.

Out of all the major findings, the most significant centers on the missing data in 25,520 precincts, which “indicates that there were at least two different canvassing programs in use during the 2010 elections, one that was used in the 41,632 precincts that had a complete set of data and another that was used in the 25,530 precincts that had missing sets of data…”

So they ask: “How come there was more than one program in play? The obvious answer… is that the original program that was supposed to canvass votes and transmit the results from those 25,530 precincts was replaced by another program…”

As a result, “The only way of discovering the actual results would be to open the ballot boxes in those 25,530 precincts and count… or… feed them into pre-tested PCOS counting machines. The results can then be compared to the results reported by the substituted software… In the … set up by Smartmatic, the consolidating computers apparently had no ‘hand-shaking’ protocols that would have allowed them to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate sources… (which means) the canvassing computers could have added to, subtracted from, or otherwise altered election results and then transmitted bogus… returns.”

The late IT expert Manuel Alcuaz had repeatedly stressed in the many forums he spoke to, including my TV show, that the cheating in elections is not at the precinct level, where local and party officials are focused on, but at the municipal canvassing level, where the totals are very conveniently and easily manipulated with spurious inputs. Knowing this, he was thus incensed as the precinct level computerization was a big rip-off. Since past Comelec officials (including its then legal chief) allegedly derived pecuniary benefits from Smartmatic’s PCOS machines, so are the present crop of Comelec commissioners and their supposed politician-clients perceptibly pushing for this patently fraudulent automated system for 2013 and 2016.

In the meantime, the political elite and its darling chief executive are creating political circuses left and right--all to divert attention from the most crucial issues, including the question, “Is PeNoy simply a Hocus-PCOS’ed president?”