Senate buzz on vote on Corona: “worry not about INC, we have PCOS”

POLITICAL TIDBITS

Belinda-Olivares Cunanan

Wednesday, 20 June 2012

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polbits@yahoo.com

The SC’s recent decision to lift the TRO on the petition of four different organizations to junk the P1.8 billion contract between Comelec and Smartmatic to purchase the much-discredited PCOS machines is being offered as evidence of the anticipated “chilling effect” on the SC of the ouster of Corona. That view is totally justified. Recall that the TRO on that contract was a tight 8-7 decision of the magistrates, led by CJ Corona, last May; but early last week, three weeks after he was ousted by the Senate, the SC decision became 11-3 for the lifting of this TRO and upholding the validity of the contract that was done without proper bidding. Four justices moved from against to pro-contract.

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On the other hand, the three SC justices who voted against the contract with Smartmatic, namely, Arturo Brion, Martin Villarama and Estela Perlas-Bernabe, are being lauded for standing firm against the PCOS, despite P-Noy’s naked interference when he expressed strong preference for it the day before the SC decision’s promulgation. Bernabe, the most recent of three P-Noy appointees, is thought of as a “deodorizer,” so that it couldn’t be said that his appointees went solid for the contract.

I attended the first SC hearing on this issue late last April and Justice Arturo Brion impressed me with his well-thought out questions to the petitioners’ lawyers. Brion, valedictorian of his Ateneo law class and a bar-topnotcher, has a reputation for being quite independent-minded and would actually make a good CJ, but I doubt if he’d ever come close to appointment, given P-Noy’s tuta requirement.

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As mentioned in this blog earlier, the lawyers for the anti-contract petitioners led by Davao Archbishop Fernando Capalla were contemplating whether to file a motion for reconsideration (MR) of the SC decision on the PCOS---given the seemingly hopelessness in the face of the massive 11-3 decision. But now the lawyers have agreed to file that MR even though it may be “suntok sa bwan,” as Tandem lawyer Demosthenes Donato puts it.

I agree on the MR as it will tell the Filipino people---with the help of media that care---about the dangers to the 2013 elections of using those machines once again. Let’s put the MR on record for history as a protest of Comelec’s cavalier attitude towards the requisites for clean and honest elections.

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What the four citizens’ groups that filed that petition vs. the PCOS contract feel terrible about is that the high court chose to zero in on the validity of the contract and ignored the defects of the automated election system (AES) peddled by Smartmatic and those 82,000 PCOS machines. The petitioners’ lawyers argue that unlike the claim of Smartmatic that there were just “glitches” in the AES system and that these have already been “corrected,” it actually has “major fundamental defects” that have not been attended to.

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Three of the most serious defects, maintain the petitioners’ lawyers, are:

1). the failure of Smartmatic’s AES to meet the 99.995 percent accuracy level of the PCOS machines, demanded in its contract with Comelec. This was despite the attestation to this level by the PPCRV, which is being ridiculed as “Smartmatic’s ‘unofficial’ spokesperson; 2). The lack of functional digital signatures of the machines, owing to Comelec’s unexplained Resolution No. 8786 in May, 2010, which ordered all the board of election inspectors (BEI) nationwide to disregard these signatures’ use; as a result, the electronic election returns pouring into Comelec’s system couldn’t be traced accurately, and 3). The thorough vulnerability of the PCOS machines to hacking from outside, as shown in the May 2010 elections.

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On the issue of the lack of “digital signatures” on any of the electronic election returns nationwide, Tandem asserts that “it necessarily follows that the constitutional mandate to secure the ‘sanctity of the ballot’ has been grossly violated during the May 2010 national and local elections.

On the other hand, with regard to the ease of hacking these machines, it will be recalled that many unauthorized PCOS machines were recovered from various areas, the most notorious of which were the 60 found in Antipolo. Who were operating them? Will these operators be active again in 2013?

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Prodded by well-meaning citizens’ groups such as the “Consumer Watch” of Raul Concepcion for Comelec to act now to implement the AES for the 2013 elections, the petitioners’ groups led by Archbishop Capalla and Tandem are not buying the proposal of Smartmatic to conduct random tests on the viability of the repaired PCOS machines.  To oppose such random tests is a valid posture. For just like the P39 billion conditional cash transfer (CCT) program of the P-Noy administration for 2012 (which will balloon to P49 billion in 2013), which likes to show off its efficacy by selecting “pilot areas” where all factors are under its control, the Smartmatic demo will show one or two machines “working” in say, its Cabuyao HQ and perhaps in one or two more places.  But what about the rest of the 82,000 across the archipelago?

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Many political pundits have noted that during the vote on CJ Corona’s fate following his Senate impeachment trial, the “Sanctimonious 20” senators appeared to have ignored the plea of the powerful Iglesia ni Cristo sect to vote for his acquittal. The question on many minds was, how could this have happened, when in the past these politicians would assiduously court the INC’s solid vote? Some pundits have offered as answer the PCOS machines which have now been given free rein to determine the outcome of our 2013 elections.

Talk in the Senate in the final days of the Corona trial was the reported admonition from the President’s allies:  Ignore the INC. Worry not, we have the PCOS.