Let us not kid ourselves. It will take more than a declaration by President Rodrigo Duterte that there will be no fraud in the automated midterm elections in 2019 to set the nation free from its Smartmatic nightmare from the past and restore confidence in our electoral democracy.
It will take more than a Senate committee inquiry to get at the truth and the extent of cheating in the 2016 elections, and bring closure to this wound to our democracy.
Even if the Supreme Court, sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), reaches a firm and credible conclusion on the recount of votes in the vice-presidential contest between now VP Maria Leonor Robredo and former senator, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., tough questions will remain and must be faced.
Suspicion will persist because officials perceived to be fraudulently elected are sitting in high offices of government, and some have gotten away scot-free without suffering any penalties.
This blight must be expunged or exorcised from our election system and our public life by an appointed commission inquiry that will get at the facts of this massive national deception.
We may learn from the way the Catholic Church is finally facing today the truth about sex abuse of children because of painstaking inquiries conducted into churches in the United States, Australia and Ireland. We should similarly adopt this method to establish incontrovertibly that our people have been repeatedly cheated in their national elections through the corrupt adoption of an electronic voting system provided by Venezuelan-owned Smartmatic Corporation.
Our efforts to investigate the fraud have been ineffective, sporadic, incompetent and unproductive. There has been more grandstanding than fact-finding.
The Senate inquiry led by Sen. Aquilino Pimentel 3rd has not gotten beyond the surface of the explosive charge made by Senate President Vicente Sotto 3rd that the 2016 elections were sabotaged.
Relentless inquiry must seek answers to the following:
1) The extent of fraud and manipulation of the election count and official results, especially as they relate to the senatorial elections, wherein the proclaimed winners and rankings defied popular expectations.
2) The violations of the automated election law and the complicity of the Commission on Elections in the election fraud and the failure of election safeguards.
3) The sinister role played by Smartmatic Corporation as the contracted electronic voting systems provider in the massive election fraud; and the total cost to the public treasury of the hiring of Smartmatic.
The only way to clear up this messy record is to launch a full investigation into the 2016 elections and force the Comelec to open its files and declassify all documents relating to the conduct of the balloting.
There should be no toleration of the interference and stonewalling being put up by some opposition senators to a full inquiry into the polls conducted more than two years ago. The Liberal opposition is dead set on preventing the real electoral verdict of the people from coming out, because they realize that the truth will be devastating to the party and many reputations.
We say it is past the time to stop the stonewalling, the suppression and the concealment of the truth of the 2016 elections. The government must seek the truth from the facts of what really happened and what was perpetrated in the balloting in 2016.
Filipinos need the whole truth to exorcise the Smartmatic nightmare.
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