Never-ending story NO HOLDS BARRED Armida Siguion-Reyna 05/28/2010

Never-ending story

NO HOLDS BARRED Armida Siguion-Reyna 05/28/2010 A senator says the cheating in this year’s election isn’t as bad as it was in 2004, so it will be easier to move on. I beg to disagree. A congressman says this time there is proof of the cheating, whereas in 2004 there was none. I all the more disagree. To begin with, cheating is cheating. There’s no difference between 20,000 votes and 500 votes, although of course if you’re the candidate you’d outright say that there in those figures lie the clear difference between winning and losing. This isn’t so for God; you face Him on Judgment Day and He won’t accept “Konti lang po ang dinaya ko,” as an excuse. Likewise for the voter; ninakawan mo siya ng boto, ninakawan mo na rin siya ng pag-asa. For those involved in the Fernando Poe Jr. campaign the heartache was not in his losing, for he did not lose. He was cheated, as we all know, so if anyone truly lost there, it was the country. The pain was in seeing otherwise honest men not really giving a damn for one whom they looked down on as a mere actor and therefore not well-equipped as “the economist.” Among these honest men were a future president and one who didn’t quite make it to the second highest office of the land, and the survey-makers, the “trending” geniuses. The senator who kept on going “Noted,” “Noted,” “Noted,” to this day can’t understand why his utterance of such is still taken against him, claiming he was at that time working in accordance with the Constitution. The “Garci tapes” hadn’t yet surfaced, so he “noted” continuously, as if “noting” was all that he could do. The truth is, the word meant more. As verb it is noticing or paying particular attention to something. A note is a written record, an annotation, a reference to something one goes back to, as in “I take note, babalikan ko iyan.” Except no such balikan ever took place; it was as if no attention had ever been called to dubious election returns (ERs) and CoCs in that National Board of Canvassers. The ballots that awaited investigation were never given a second glance; shortly after it was rumored that these had been replaced by bogus votes para nga naman sakaling magkasilipan, wala nang masisilip. Here in da Pilipins, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.... MORE   Source:  The Daily Tribune URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100528com4.html

COMMENTARY EDITORIAL No choice but for manual count FRONTLINE Deliberate fraud? FEATURE At home or work, Thais split over Red Shirt protests NO HOLDS BARRED Never-ending story DIE HARD III Lessons 2010 SILVER LINING No puppet focus US troops in fruitless search of Afghan village