Calls mount for P7.2-B PCOS deal audit
By Pat C. Santos 06/19/2010 Even with a high profile public relations offensive by Smartmatic officials to counteract the growing allegations of electoral fraud, and hiring the 2008 Miss Universe, a Venezuelan, as Miss Transparency for Smartmatic, and despite the Commission on Elections (Comelec) claim of the country having held the first successful nationwide automated elections, computer experts took the strong view that there are still lots of questions that need to be resolved, among which is the issue of having a financial audit as far as the P7.2 billion cost of precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines leased by Smartmatic-TIM to the Comelec. Also at issue are the reported P4-billion additional budget which was given by Comelec to Smartmatic, the absence of UV lamps which were not utilized, the multimillion-peso secrecy folders, indelible ink, ballot and pre- shading and other forms of fraud such as vote shaving and vote buying during the election. These issues were yesterday aired during the forum “Hocus-PCOS and Noynoy (Aquino’s) first 100 days” held at the De La Salle University where Prof. Sherwin Ola, a computer professor, and others shared their views on the recent automated election, with the consensus established that there is a need to have the P7-billion contract of Smartmatic undergo a post audit. Ola said “in the parlance of IT community, there are lots of issues that should be addressed as the report of massive disenfranchisement happened as reported by the Comelec to have reached the figure of 20 percent of the voting population, estimated at 51 million, or a disenfranchisement of over 10 million voters on election day. Another resource speaker, Dr. Giovanni Tapang, UP Physics professor and Kontra Daya head, said the automated election system last May 10 was a hodgepodge and had hoc solutions on election day itself and simply did not work as planned. Tapang, through his powerpoint presentation, said that the people can prepare for vulnerabilities but that the Comelec chose to ignore these and the poll body even opened the avenue for more vulnerabilities of the system to come in. On Ola’s part he stressed that now is the time to have a lifestyle check conducted on Comelec officials who he said have the track record for being corrupt due to the fact that the automation was pushed and the cost of leasing the PCOS machines at P7.2 billion is too high. “Who made money on this? Who benefited from this?,” he pointed out. “ Comelec should show the data and check if the accuracy of the machines conforms with the ballot as paper trail in order to determine if the people’s money is worth the rental price of the PCOS machines,” added Ola. The group noted that Comelec officials were not prepared to conduct the nationwide automated polls and that the recently conducted May elections only served as an “on-the-job (OJT) training for the Comelec officials who were mostly lawyers and not IT knowledgable. Source: The Daily Tribune URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/headlines/20100619hed1.html |
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