THERE they go again, using the Marcoses to scare or diminish, as if this old trick will still work.
First, we have former Chief Justice Hilario Davide attempting to scare us like little children by raising the specter of Bongbong Marcos running as transitional vice president should the proposed charter drafted by the consultative committee formed by President Duterte push through. Davide made it appear that it is bad news for Marcos to be elected as such, forgetting the fact that he was voted by millions and almost won as vice president. Davide tried to scare an electorate, many of whom believe that Marcos lost only because he was cheated.
And then you have Sen. Franklin Drilon, so alert during the Senate Hearing conducted by the committee of Sen. Koko Pimentel on the privilege speech of Senate President Tito Sotto about the alleged fraud during the May 2016 elections. He attempted to diminish the credibility of lawyer Glenn Chong, who almost singlehandedly demolished the credibility of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and Smartmatic with his clear, pointed and well-documented revelations. Drilon did this by trying to connect Chong to the Marcoses, even wrongly alluding to him as Bongbong Marcos’ lawyer at the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET). The senator from Iloilo tried to impeach the credibility of Chong by painting him as a partisan resource person, even as he and Sen. Kiko Pangilinan, his colleague in the Liberal Party, were obviously and unabashedly lawyering for the Comelec and Smartmatic during the hearing.
And finally, you have Rappler, still active and living on borrowed time after the Court of Appeals upheld the decision of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) canceling its registration, choosing to focus on Drilon’s allegations against Chong as a Marcos partisan instead of focusing on his damaging revelations.
It appears that the machinery is well oiled and in high gear to spin the fraud. It is utterly frustrating that the Senate hearing on Sotto’s privilege speech merited only scant attention from mainstream media. This was despite the fact that the hearing was highly anticipated and was a matter of great importance considering that it was about how we conducted our elections in 2016, and in the face of the fact that Smartmatic may most likely remain as the provider for the automated elections next year. Bombshell revelations were made during the hearings that should have warranted screaming headlines and bylines, matched with live on-cam reports from field reporters breaking the news during and immediately after the hearing. Yet, there was none — no reports in the 6 p.m. TV newscasts, no coverage in the online and print versions of newspapers. Instead, what appears to be covered up is the stench of the fraud, and mainstream media may wittingly or unwittingly have played a role in it. And Facebook has been very busy marking as spam and taking down posts not only by Chong but also by those who share his posts.
Chong’s revelations, and what transpired during the proceedings, would have been enough to send news desks into frenzy. Chong had methodically exposed evidence of serious election irregularities.
The case of Ragay, Camarines Sur is worth re-telling. All its vote counting machines (VCMs) had already undergone final testing and sealing (FTS) on May 5 and were only reactivated on the day of the elections on May 9. Yet, one VCM transmitted to the Comelec Central Server (CCS) in the morning of May 8. This begs the question of how a VCM that is supposed to be turned off can transmit. And the possible answer was unsettling — the transmitting VCM may have been a clone or fake. Having cloned or fake VCMs in an automated election is something that is utterly alarming and is a revelation that should have earned media attention. But it appeared media ignored this and Rappler instead chose to focus on Chong’s association with the Marcoses as if it was more newsworthy.
Chong presented other damaging information, such as the cases of out-of-sequence or missing ballot images. He affirmed the presence of a fourth queueing server that disaggregated the results transmitted by the VCMs from just one file and broke it up into 11 or 13 files. It was also revealed that for some precincts, these chopped-up tallies were later transmitted to the corresponding servers in different time periods, or in an asynchronous manner. Again, this was ignored by media, and Rappler chose to focus on Chong’s association with the Marcoses.
And even more discomforting was the manner the representatives of Comelec and Smartmatic behaved during the hearing. Former Commissioner Christian Robert Lim tried to make it appear that the presence of the fourth server was part of the briefing he conducted in Sta. Rosa, only to be contradicted by someone who was present at the briefing. Comelec could not even be consistent on the purpose of the fourth server, which was referred to as a “meet me room” which, according to Executive Director Jose Tolentino, served as a platform to convert information coming from a different telco readable, even as another official referred to it as a back-up server.
Overwhelmed by compelling evidence of anomalies and flaws in the system, which may have provided the smoking guns to the commission of election fraud, Tolentino and lawyer Lazatin representing Smartmatic deployed the equally flawed premise that there had been no complaints or cases that showed that the system had altered the results. This was however debunked when Chong and another resource person presented cases where VCM results differed from the manual recount.
These revelations are enough to doubt the credibility of Comelec and Smartmatic. To think that the 25 percent shading anomaly was not even part of the discussions.
In the end, it was former Comelec chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr. who perfectly epitomized the spinning. Instead of focusing on and rebutting the revelations made by Chong, Brillantes simply opted to go the route of deploying an ad hominem attack against the crusading lawyer. Confronted with possible violations of the election law in which he himself may have had a hand, and which may have led to a crooked conduct of the elections, Brillantes responded by painting Chong as a crook.
It is understandable for Comelec and Smartmatic to try everything to spin and hide the flaws of their own system and cover up their sins. But what is unforgiveable is when media becomes complicit with the spinning of the fraud and the covering up of the stench.
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