EDITORIAL: Comelec Chair either has lost it or is a determined liar

WE watched Comelec Chairman Sixto Brilliantes yesterday morning talk to ABS-CBN News people, including broadcast icon Ted Failon, and saw how the Comelec Boss has either lost it and now has an addled brain or is a determined liar.

He biggest lie he said yesterday is that Smartmatic is the manufacturer of the PCOS machines. He said with aplomb that since this Venezuelan marketing company is the manufacturer of the Precinct Count Optical Scan machine then it is logical that it should be hired to repair them.

He seems to have forgotten or to have been brainwashed by Smartmatic’s wizard salesmen. The PCOS machines were first being manufactured in Taiwan by a company that could not continue the project. So Smartmatic had to find another manufacturer and had them made in China.

This has been the muddled and mendacious manner Chairman Brillantes has been conducting his discussions about Smartmatic, the PCOS machines, the defective way the ballots were read by the machines in the 2010 and 2013 elections, the defective way very many of the machines transmitted the defective and unverified count to the canvassing centers — in violation of our country’s laws.

He has also lied about the patriotic and courageous former Comelec Commissioner Gus Lagman. He said untruthfully that Mr. Lagman did not fight against Smartmatic and the Comelec decisions when Mr. Lagman was a commissioner.

Now we have confirmation–from the lips of Communications Secretary Coloma no less — that what we suspected is true. This is that–contrary to our Constitution’s warrant on independent constitutional institutions– Malacañang is in collusion with the Comelec in preparing to manage the 2016 election. This was something that Chairman Brillantes also admitted in his appearance on Ted Failon’s TV show yesterday morning.

Ted asked Mr. Brillantes if the President talks to, or consults him. He replied, Yes, I get consulted, but only once. Ted found that reply funny so, he sardonically asked, and switched on the laughter background, “Kinukonsulta kayo pero minsan lang, paano ba yan?” [The President habitually consults you, but only once–what kind of nonsense could that be?] Chairman Brillantes then explained that most of the time it is Justice Secretary Leila de Lima who talks to him for the president.

Secretary Coloma admitted on Monday in a lengthy press briefing that President Aquino’s Malacañang is behind the move to award Smartmatic the P1.2-billion contract to repair and refurbish the PCOS machines so they can be used in the 2016 elections. We Filipinos own the machines. Comelec bought them from Smartmatic for billions of pesos.

Chairman Brillantes clarified that the contract that Smartmatic has recently won is only to diagnose the existing machines. Smartmatic will be paid some P300 million for deciding if a machine should be scrapped or can still be repaired and what repairs must be done. He said if Smartmatic wins the contract to actually repair those machines needing reconditioning, the expense could go up to more than a billion pesos.

But former Comelec official Mel Magdamo, who has disclosed shenanigans committed by Comelec and Smartmatic, said that with the poll body’s P1.8 billion budget for the repairs the government should just buy a new set of machines.

To us, all these discussions about Smartmatic are nothing in the end but carabao dung. Because of the crimes and misrepresentation it has committed with Comelec blessings, this Venezuelan company does not deserve to have anything to do with our elections forever. The Philippine government should in fact be suing it.

But the combined power of the Palace, the Congress and Comelec will allow the poll body to repeat the anti-democratic manner the 2010 and 2013 elections were conducted.

We must pray hard that the Supreme Court justices continue to be patriots and declare illegal the automated election system implemented with PCOS machines by Smartmatic in 2010 and 2013 — and declare as well that the results are invalid because the safeguards were disabled and other requirements expressly stated by our laws were violated.

Yes, the sitting officials, the President included, can continue in office as de facto but illegal and illicit occupants of their offices.

The 2016 elections must be held without the farcical AES of Smartmatic and its PCOS machines

Otherwise, the people must rise and revolt against this criminal imposition on our electoral democracy.

source:  Manila Times

Comelec OKs recall vs Princesa Mayor

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has affirmed the sufficiency of the recall petition against Puerto Princesa Mayor Lucilo Bayron.

A reliable source said the Comelec en banc voted 6-0 to deny for lack of merit a motion to reconsider its earlier decision upholding the petition to recall the election of Bayron as mayor of Puerto Princesa, a gateway to the Palawan tourist destinations.

The Comelec though has yet to promulgate the decision and have it published for three weeks before a recall election can actually be held in the city.

A total of 40,409 registered voters signed the recall petition even when only 19,335 are needed for a recall election to push through. Bayron may remain as mayor if, in the recall election, he still remains as the person with the highest number of votes, which, in effect, affirms confidence in leadership.

In deciding on the case, the Comelec said that Bayron failed to offer sufficient basis for his allegations of fraud (in the gathering of signatures).

“He cannot solely rely on the fact that he won in the 2013 national and local elections to conclude that it was unlikely for the petitioners to obtain the number of signatories, as the majority of the voters have chosen him. The intervening period from the conduct of elections up to the time the signatures were gathered could have changed the perception of the people on their leader,” a portion of the un-promulgated decision reads.

It added that “Mayor Bayron simply cannot conclude fraud on the basis of his victory in the last election. On the contrary, it is presumed that the supporting petitioners affixed their signatures after reading the contents of the recall petition.”

Alroben Goh, who initiated the recall petition against Bayron, said that “the recall elections against Bayron will happen soon and won’t be stopped anymore.” Goh has charged Bayron in his petition of graft and corruption, nepotism, and worsening economy and peace and order, among others.

source:  Businessworld

Did Coloma accidentally tell the truth?

Since we are often lied to, we the media and the public should be glad and thankful when a public official or a politician tells the truth, even if only accidentally.

When this happens, bells peal and presses stop, so much so that US political pundit, Michael Kinsley, sought to register it as the Kinsley Law of gaffes — “A gaffe is when a politician (accidentally) tells the truth.” He said it first in the UK Guardian on January 14,1992.

Whoever owns the patent, gratitude is due Communications Secretary Sonny Coloma for accidentally (inadvertently, carelessly, mistakenly) revealing the truth that Malacañang is behind the scheme to award to Smartmatic the P1.2-billion contract to repair and augment the PCOS machines of the poll body for the 2016 elections. And what is more alarming, the Office of the President is meddling in the work of the constitutionally independent Commission on Elections (Comelec), and trying to influence the preparations for the 2016 elections.

Like stepping on quicksand
Coloma said it all at a press briefing last Monday. Had he been concise, certain journalists (women perhaps) could be forgiven if they hallucinated that it was all just a “Freudian slip” on his part. But the way the briefing developed, it was more like stepping on quicksand. With every point Coloma made and every elaboration he offered, the administration sank deeper into unconstitutional depths.

Coloma’s truth-telling is all the more astonishing because it was totally gratuitous. The Comelec can speak for itself, it has access to its own press corps, and it has an equally verbose spokesman in James Jimenez.

Until the Press Secretary let this cat out of the bag, no one knew that the administration was actively lobbying the Comelec to award the contract to Smartmatic. Everything was behind the scenes.

The Tribune report
Let us now turn to the substance of what the Press Secretary said, warts and all. I was not present at the news briefing; hence my information comes mainly from the detailed accounts of various Palace beat reporters, who quoted Coloma’s words like they were Shakespeare’s jewels.

Especially helpful for this column was the report in the Tribune of Joshua Labonera, which was most revealing.

Labonera reported the following:

1. Presidential Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr. said that Malacañang continues to lodge its trust in the Comelec on the use of the PCOS machines for the 2016 polls despite issues being raised on the contract to refurbish these machines.

2. Coloma went further, saying the reliability of the PCOS machines has been proven the 2010 and 2013 elections.

3. Coloma says “We have gone through two national elections in 2010 and 2013. There were no massive protests or uprising from the people against the results of the two elections.”

4. In fact, there were a lot of anomalies noted in 2010 and 2013. All safety features were not in place at all, thus making it easier to commit automated fraud.

5. A former commissioner, Gus Lagman, whose appointment was not renewed by President Aquino after he started to question the integrity and reliability of the PCOS machines, called the controversial new contract “a midnight deal with Smartmatic.”

Comelec awards, Palace justifies
The link between Malacañang and Comelec is shown in the glaring irregularity of Comelec’s failure to hold a public bidding on the contract.

In a statement, Comelec has contended that the decision to award the contract of refurbishing PCOS machines is in accordance with Executive Order 423 series of 2005 or the law prescribing the rules and procedures on the review and approval of all government contracts to conform with Republic Act no. 9184, otherwise known as the Government Procurement Reform Act.

Posing as a lawyer, Coloma says there should be a presumption that Comelec acted in accordance with the law. This presumption argument is a favorite ruse of Palace spokesmen to explain away wrongdoing in the Aquino administration. But serious lawyers say that this line of reasoning is absurd; no lawyer would raise it before the Supreme Court, sitting en banc.

Coloma’s accidental truth-telling exposes a violation of the constitutional provision on the Constitutional commissions in Article IX of the Constitution.

In Section 1, it reads “the constitutional commissions, which shall be independent, are the Civil Service Commission, the Commission on Elections and the Commission on Audit.”

The Aquino administration appears to believe that simply because the President has the power to appoint the chairman and members of these commissions, these bodies are mere extensions of the Office of the President. They are most emphatically not.

Appointed members may feel forever grateful to President Aquino for being appointed, and they may not care one whit about their independence. But the people care. This is a prerogative they are not at liberty to surrender.

When this reprehensible Smartmatic contract is finally heard and deliberated by the Supreme Court, we shall know what this independence means. I’m curious to see who will stand up to argue the position of the executive.

As things stand therefore, Coloma’s accidental truth-telling could be the nail that will send Smartmatic home to Venezuela. There will be no pabaon (parting gift) for Comelec chair Sixto Brillantes, when he retires next month.

Perhaps then we can attend to the necessary mending and overhaul of the Commission on Elections, before the nation holds the 2016 elections

yenmakabenta@yahoo.com

source:  Manila Times' Column of Yen Makabenta