12/19/2011
Just as we said that Gloria
Arroyo was not president when she was declared such in 2001 by Davide
and again in 2004 by Congress (in an election where the Cojuangco-Aquino
clan endorsed her wholeheartedly), so it is increasingly the case with
the current Malacaang occupant.
When BS Aquino III became an
accidental candidate in 2009 upon the death of his mother, Cory Aquino
(an event played up to launch his campaign), the election that followed
was soon hounded by suspicions on the PCOS (Precinct Count Optical Scan)
machines of Smartmatic and the Commission on Election (Comelec)s
removal of vital voting safeguards. Many became aware that the UV light
ballot authentication, the digital signature of the Boards of Election
Inspectors (BEI), and the voters receipt were all done away with. Even
the highly irregular recall of 76,000 CF (Compact Flash) cards just a
week before the polls raised a huge red flag.
Today, many of those
suspected criminal acts are now confirmed, thanks to the findings of
citizens election watchdogs, CenPEG (Center for People Empowerment in
Governance) and AES (Automated Election System) Watch, after year-long
investigations.
The following conclusions, which I abridge below,
have been borne out of the painstaking efforts of information technology
(IT) academics and experts alike:
On May 10, 2010, (Comelec) made
available to the public the election results by precinct, town/city,
district, province, and nation (via the Web site)
http://electionresults.comelec.gov.ph/. A few months later this Web site
was taken down. We believe that it is governments duty to make election
data from this Web site publicly and freely available, because it is
THE STORY of how the Smartmatic-Comelec partnership carried out the
computerization of our elections, and whether the computerization
exercise was successful or not (As such) we have decided to publish our
mirror of this Web site, so that the data are available even if they are
not anymore available (That) Web site is:
http://curry.ateneo.net/~ambo/ph2010/electionresults/...
A number
of researchers have begun work on the data in this Web site
(discovering) many serious errors like: 1) 371 precinct election results
with 10 voters or less, when the actual number of voters is 400 to 1000
for each of those precincts, 2) 8,939 precincts with no data at all,
indicating a possible failure of transmission of data from the precinct
to Comelec, 3) of the 67,162 precinct election results which contain
data, 25,530 precinct election results have missing data in one elective
position, or two or three or more (Such) missing data in one or more
elective positions is a clear indicator of the presence of serious bugs
which SysTest Labs already pointed out in its certification report to
Comelec, which bugs the Technical Evaluation Committee and Comelec
conveniently chose to ignore.
(The researchers cannot) stand by
while Comelec makes another serious mistake in re-using the Smartmatic
technology. First, Smartmatic has to install a substantial number of bug
fixes in their system before they can get it to work for our elections.
Second, Smartmatic cannot do these bug fixes by its lonesome self,
since it does not own the technology the copyright to the software is
by Dominion Voting Systems of Canada, and Smartmatic is not allowed to
make any changes in the source code, and must wait for Dominion to write
the bug fixes in its own good time. Third, the PCOS hardware is not
adequate to implement the security features required by RA 9369, like:
1) the requirement of digital signatures by the BEI and 2) the planned
fingerprint/biometric reader to be installed on the PCOS.
Kudos to
experts Dr. Pablo Manalastas, Dr. Felix Muga and Dr. Philip Truscott of
the Ateneo de Manilas computer science and mathematics departments for
trawling data originally posted on the Comelec Web site, which had been
inexplicably taken down.
Out of all the major findings, the most
significant centers on the missing data in 25,520 precincts, which
indicates that there were at least two different canvassing programs in
use during the 2010 elections, one that was used in the 41,632 precincts
that had a complete set of data and another that was used in the 25,530
precincts that had missing sets of data.
So they ask: How come
there was more than one program in play? The obvious answer is that the
original program that was supposed to canvass votes and transmit the
results from those 25,530 precincts was replaced by another program.
As
a result, The only way of discovering the actual results would be to
open the ballot boxes in those 25,530 precincts and count or feed them
into pre-tested PCOS counting machines. The results can then be compared
to the results reported by the substituted software In the set up by
Smartmatic, the consolidating computers apparently had no hand-shaking
protocols that would have allowed them to distinguish between legitimate
and illegitimate sources (which means) the canvassing computers could
have added to, subtracted from, or otherwise altered election results
and then transmitted bogus returns.
The late IT expert Manuel
Alcuaz had repeatedly stressed in the many forums he spoke, including my
TV show, that the cheating in elections is not at the precinct level,
where local and party officials are focused on, but at the municipal
canvassing level, where the totals are very conveniently and easily
manipulated with spurious inputs. Knowing this, he was thus incensed as
the precinct level computerization was a big rip-off.
Since past Comelec
officials (including its then legal chief) allegedly derived pecuniary
benefits from Smartmatics PCOS machines, so are the present crop of
Comelec commissioners and their supposed politician-clients perceptibly
pushing for this patently fraudulent automated system for 2013 and 2016.
In
the meantime, the political elite and its darling chief executive are
creating political circuses left and right all to divert attention from
the most crucial issues, including the question, Is PeNoy simply a
Hocus-PCOSed president?
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo
OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL,
Saturday, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable
Channel 8; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles
plus TV and radio archives)
(Reprinted with permission from Mr. Herman Tiu-Laurel)
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL:
http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20111219com5.html
