It’s been nine years. Maybe it’s about time we ended our messy, scandal-plagued relationship with that Venezuelan.
It’s just not working anymore. For starters, you’d think we’d have learned how to run an automated election by ourselves, using our abundant local talent and the lessons we’ve learned in the past three political exercises with the Commission on Elections’ partner of choice, the infamous Smartmatic.
After all, as I recall, the original plan was to learn how to automate Philippine elections using Smartmatic’s technology. This was why the original bid for the automated election system designed a decade ago involved partnering with a local outfit in a joint venture scheme that would include the transfer of technology.
As for local talent, I have no doubt whatsoever that we will be able to find the computer wizards who will be able to write the code for a homegrown program that will run on store-bought, cheaply sourced parts for the next elections. Every computer-savvy person I’ve talked to actually wondered how hard that would be—to come up with our own, transparent, audit-friendly AES that will actually cost a lot less than the junk Smartmatic is foisting on us.
I really wouldn’t be bellyaching about Smartmatic if its record has been stellar in the elections of 2010, 2013 and 2016. But ever since we hooked up with the Venezuelans running that company, something has always seemed to go seriously wrong with our elections.
My favorite 2010 automated election anecdote involves former Maguindanao Rep. Didagen Dilangalen, who protested that if the Comelec-Smartmatic count that year were to be believed, he did not even vote for himself in his own precinct. Dilangalen deadpanned that he would understand if his wife held a grudge against him that made her not vote for him; but he distinctly remembers, he said, casting a vote for himself, which was never counted.
Right after the 2013 elections, a group of IT experts, politicians and other concerned citizens actually sued Smartmatic after a Venezuelan supervisor named Marlon Garcia allegedly monkeyed around with the computer source code in its vote counting gadgets, then called Precinct Count Optical Scan machines, right after the polls closed on election day. That case has languished for so long in the Department of Justice that Garcia apparently decided that it’s perfectly all right to pull the same stunt last May 9.
If the incoming president, Rodrigo Duterte, really wants change, perhaps he can spend a little time thinking about our stormy relationship with Smartmatic. And the next time the people at Comelec talk about continuing the romance for one more election, Duterte can say “S-T-O-P, stop” already.
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The headline-grabbing story, of course, is president-in-waiting Rodrigo Duterte offering the Communist Party of the Philippines four departments in his soon-to-be-constituted Cabinet. But I have a smaller problem with one of the names Duterte actually mentioned, that of high-profile lawyer Salvador Panelo, whom the Davao City mayor nominated as his presidential spokesman.
I don’t know if Duterte is sending a message to the media by throwing out Panelo’s name as spokesman. After all, the abrasive, combative Panelo is probably the last person you’d want to speak for you, if you were president.
All this time, I thought Duterte would appoint the self-effacing but thoroughly effective Peter Tiu Laviña to be his official mouthpiece. Laviña did a fine job of speaking for Duterte during the campaign and has in the process developed great relationships with the reporters and other journalists he interacted with on a daily basis during the period.
Panelo, of course, was Duterte’s answer to Senator Antonio Trillanes, who accused the mayor of hiding billions of pesos in bank accounts at a BPI branch in Ortigas Center. And Panelo did a fine job of going mano a mano with Trillanes, who has since gone into hibernation.
But turning a publicity-seeking lawyer known for his high acceptance fees and controversial clients like Mayor Antonio Sanchez and the Ampatuans into a presidential spokesman? That’s a terrible mistake, I think.
Duterte must hate the media so much that he will inflict Panelo on them.
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And what should we make of this current member of the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board who recently hailed Duterte’s election as the best thing that happened to road discipline nationwide? I think LTFRB member Ariel Inton only wants to keep his job, like so many officials of the Aquino administration who are making a beeline for Davao City.
Just stop, board member Inton. If you and the rest of Aquino’s men at the LTFRB failed so miserably in the last six years, you shouldn’t be given six more to do more of the same thing.