Winner - AES/Smartmatic; Loser - Filipino people

The election into office of misfits, rascals, the poorly qualified and members of entrenched political dynasties may not be the worst result of the recently concluded midterm elections.  More pernicious and fatal to our democratic processes, or the appearance thereof, is the virtual  enthronement, if the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) is to have its way, of the current automated election system (AES) designed and operationalized by a foreign multinational company, SMARTMATIC, to  a seat of honor in running and controlling Philippine elections.

It is no surprise that COMELEC Chairman Brillantes’ first post-election statement was a glowing appraisal of the AES’ success in supposedly speeding and cleaning up the counting and canvassing of votes, as if slow counts were the main or only source of the widespread fraud that has continued to plague Philippine elections.   Cast into the shadows were the people's patience and determination to hurdle the travails brought about by the PCOS breakdowns and other related problems.

Unfortunately for Mr. Brillantes, his premature announcement of smooth-sailing automated elections plus his hype that a speedy count eliminates the possibility of fraud is backfiring: the count is stuck at 70% and close to 12 million votes is still unaccounted for three days after the closing of the polls.

This delay is being attributed to malfunctioning PCOS machines and weak or non-existent telecommunications signals both of which problems were earlier pooh-poohed by the COMELEC as minor and already being addressed, if not resolved.  But even if the remaining 30% of votes are eventually counted, these will be held suspect and indelibly tainted with doubt.

COMELEC obscures the fact that it has not been able to rectify the sins of omission and commission with regard to the AES dating back to the 2010 presidential polls.  These had caused uproar, not just from losing candidates, but from the Filipino InfoTech (IT) community and various election watchdogs.

COMELEC instead bought the lemon of a system from its foreign vendor SMARTMATIC.   The two entities colluded in disregarding, trifling with and dispensing with the technical requirements, including security features, mandated by law to ensure that the vote count accurately reflected first, bona fide ballots and second, correct election returns.

Not only this, COMELEC/SMARTMATIC even aggravated the situation further as we shall illustrate.

For the 2010 elections, there already was the failure to have an independent review of the source code (the human-readable instructions that would be then programmed into machine language and installed into the PCOS machine) and to determine whether the source code used by all 76,000 PCOS machines was the same one stored at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

For the 2013 elections, the new source code that was supposed to incorporate corrections and improvements in the AES drawing from the 2010 experience, was not in the hands of the COMELEC until Election Day itself due to a legal dispute between SMARTMATIC and Dominion, the software provider.

Three years after the 2010 polls, COMELEC again failed to give political parties and other interested groups the chance to do this crucial independent review only doing so at the last minute when it was impossible to do a proper review because of time and other constraints.

In 2010, there was no certification of the consolidating and canvassing system, which starts from the PCOS transmission of results to the municipal and provincial canvassing and from there to the national canvassing.  In the actual canvassing, the AES came up with grossly erroneous and inconsistent figures for the total number of registered voters. This was eventually corrected and SMARTMATIC was allowed to get away with explanations that didn’t wash and were obvious cop-outs.

This time around, we have the case of bloated results reported from the supposed parallel quick count conducted by the PPCRV-KBP using data from the COMELEC transparency (sic) server during the early hours of the transmission of votes.  More than 10 million votes were tallied from only 1,418 precincts whereas each precinct only has 1000 voters at most.

SMARTMATIC eventually came in to fix the problem supposedly in the “script” that added the results incorrectly.  But as Kontradaya convenor Dr. Ganni Tapang pointed out, “The whole episode shows how SMARTMATIC (or anyone for that matter) can change the codes that tally the results at will (underscoring ours) -- even during Election Day. Without the benefit of public disclosure of the AES source code and thorough pre-testing, these statistically wrong results put the whole canvassing of votes into serious question. “

Moreover, the PPCRV-KBP count was exposed as completely dependent on the COMELEC count and thus not the independent parallel and safeguard count it is claimed to be.

The discovery of a supposedly unused compact flash (CF) card with recorded votes in a precinct for overseas voting in Hong Kong draws attention to the problem of tampered cf cards.  How many such errors need to surface before COMELEC and the Aquino administration admit to serious problems with the AES?

What guarantees are there that no other erroneous or even false figures -- unobtrusive and therefore largely undetectable -- have been generated by the pre-programmed machines and are now incorporated into the official results?  How are those results to be trusted as valid and true?

The cavalier attitude and kid gloves treatment by COMELEC and both the Aquino and Arroyo administrations towards the design flaws, gross shortcomings and violations of legal and technical requirements by SMARTMATIC is not mere negligence or laxity on their part.

It betrays a mindset of shameless subservience to foreign technology coupled with the lack of trust in the Filipinos’ capability to do the automation on our own terms.  It reveals an utter disregard for the people's sovereign will and right to exercise suffrage without foreign intervention, much less dependence on it.  It reflects the preponderant objective of covering up their gross incompetence as well as the likely corrupt transactions undergirding the purchase of the AES from SMARTMATIC for close to two billion pesos.

 In all of the COMELEC's statements and actuations -- and for that matter the ruling regime's -- the contrast in their attitude towards foreign technology on one hand and the people on the other becomes starkly clear.   It is not the people's will and determination that make for successful elections.  Foreign-designed and operated software and machines, no matter that they are inadequately tested, veiled in secrecy and in fact suffer breakdowns, are hailed as the keys to success, serving the aim of  perpetuating the system and the ruling elite.

The people, from this standpoint, are the ones treated as mere instruments, not as the real sovereigns wielding their power to choose their leaders. #

Published in Business World
17-18 May 2013

AES unmasked

The mystique of technology, especially high tech or cutting-edge technology, as the silver bullet that would slay the monster of the notoriously dirty, violent and fraud-ridden elections in the Philippine setting has lost much of its allure after the 2010 presidential polls.

While the intricacies of the AES are unfathomable to most everyone except the information technology (IT) experts, the local IT community and election watchdog groups such as AESWATCH and Kontradaya have over time effectively unmasked the flaws, infirmities and errors in its design and operationalization to sufficiently cast doubt on the integrity of the Automated Election System (AES) and therefore the veracity and credibility of the election results.

The multi-billion peso AES designed and run by foreign companies and recently bought - lock, stock and barrel - by the COMELEC does not address the major, much less fundamental,  problems which have bedevilled the electoral system but in fact has compounded them.

Any hope that the automated elections would at least reflect the actual voting that takes place has grown dimmer and dimmer.  Many voices, including that of the principal author of the law on automation of elections, are calling for a parallel manual count of the votes cast to act as a tried-and-tested countercheck and at the same time provide a paper trail for any post-elections audit and election protests.

Two key objections have been raised.  At the forefront is the fact that the source code or the human-readable instructions to the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines and the Canvassing and Consolidating Service (CCS) have not been subjected to review by political parties and independent watchdog groups in the country as mandated by law.

The recent offer of COMELEC and SMARTMATIC, the seller of the PCOS machines and CCS system, to finally open the source code to review 5 days before election day, is not only deceptive, it is laughable, since a respectable review would take at least 6 months to accomplish.  Latest news is that COMELEC will only be able to actually possess the source code on May 13, or only on Election Day itself.

In plain language, this means that the instructions to the machines that will scan, read and add up the votes at the precinct level have not been scrutinized and verified by interested parties or independent groups because these were not made available to them by COMELEC.  Neither have the instructions for examining and consolidating the election returns (in computerized or digital form) as they are sent to the municipal, provincial and national canvassing centers been reviewed.

Without this review, the electorate and the people are being asked to trust blindly in the COMELEC in the same manner that COMELEC blindly and recklessly trusts SMARTMATIC; i.e. that there will be no errors -- intended or unintended, human- or machine-made -- of such magnitude as to render the outcome doubtful, controversial and lacking in credibility.  COMELEC’s promises, assurances and claims notwithstanding, neither the poll body nor its foreign partner are in a position to elicit such blind faith.

For what used to be an open or public and verifiable process of tallying the votes, adding them up and forwarding these to the canvassing centers at different levels has now been transformed into an invisible, unexamined and unverifiable process that has rendered election poll watchers inutile, pre-proclamation protests impossible and post-election audits as laborious and as time-consuming as before.

The AES is vulnerable not only to glitches but to wholesale manipulation or automated dagdag-bawas.  Spurious results are then almost impossible to uncover, trace and correct before candidates are proclaimed “winners”.

This situation severely, even fatally, undermines the integrity of the automated elections. The lack of transparency in the way votes will be recorded, tallied, transmitted then canvassed renders the exercise completely undemocratic.

Apart from the problems with the source code however is the more fundamental anomaly of the COMELEC's effective surrender of its mandate of controlling, supervising and safeguarding the entire electoral process by entrusting, through the AES, the counting and canvassing of votes to a foreign business entity which has neither the obligation nor the interest to see to it that the count is a precise and accurate reflection of voter intent.

This original sin has been exposed as a consequence of the legal dispute between Smartmatic, the owner of the PCOS machines, and Dominion Voting System, the owner of the software.  COMELEC could not compel Dominion to turn over the source code (to which the latter had proprietary claims) to the poll body.  Neither could it compel SLI Global Solutions, the foreign entity that COMELEC paid to review the source code, to do the same.  The end result is that COMELEC did not have the source code the whole time that it was preparing for the 2013 elections!

Moreover, the entire time that the source code has been in the hands of these foreign entities and without the verification conducted by Philippine entities, whether this be COMELEC, political parties, election watchdogs and other interested parties, it is rendered vulnerable to undetected tampering.

Clearly, the sacred duty of government to conduct the supposed democratic exercise of elections in order to allow the expression of the people’s sovereign will has been irreparably compromised.

The way COMELEC has handled the situation and in the process circumvented the law, starting from the decision to buy the AES used in 2010 from Smartmatic when the software is under dispute; how it dissembled regarding the status of the source code; its refusal to acknowledge the system’s flaws and vulnerabilities; how it failed to act on the concrete problems in the AES that cropped up and were reported and identified in the 2010 elections and  attacked instead the motives and the competence of critics including IT experts –  all these are danger signals that the AES will be foisted upon the people as a fait accompli in the 2013 and even for the 2016 elections through the collusion of COMELEC officials, SMARTMATIC and all the way up to Malacañang.  (The latter has been noticeably silent about the entire controversy.)

A more insidious line has even been used by COMELEC Chair Sixto Brillantes to defend the indefensible. He cites the 2010 elections wherein the source code was also not subjected to independent review by Filipino IT experts but elections, he says, took place according to plan.  He claims the 2010 elections outcome was widely perceived to be credible.  Otherwise, Mr. Brillantes testily asks, are the AES critics questioning the victory of current President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III?

The only reasonable answer to this empty rhetorical question is that the use of the AES, with all its questionable and unacceptable features, makes Mr. Aquino’s victory unverifiable.  That Mr. Aquino’s win was widely perceived to be a rejection of the corrupt and mendacious Arroyo regime, and as consistent with pre-election surveys, had more to do with the acceptability of the results to the public rather than the credibility of the automated polls itself.

The elections slated for May 13 will proceed by hook or by crook despite the outcry against the AES. COMELEC resists any call for a parallel manual count.  The conventional wisdom being peddled is that what is important is that the results be “credible” from the point of view of the stakeholders-who-matter -- the dominant political parties/candidates and their backers, big business, corporate mass media together with other institutional moulders of public opinion and the shadowy but ultimately influential foreign political and economic interests.

The work of truly independent election watchdogs and those who are committed to genuine people’s democracy continues after the May 13 polls.  Our critique and opposition should lead to the junking of the AES and its replacement with an automated system that would truly reflect the vote, and as far as possible -- given the built-in limits of an elite-ruled society and political system -- the sovereign will of the Filipino people. #

Published in Business World
10-11 May 2013

May Day: Up close and personal

This columnist took to the streets yesterday, May Day or Labor Day.  It had been quite a while since I had joined a major rally of workers having been sidelined by immune deficiency and other ailments.  The heat, humidity, swirling bacteria-laden air and crowds were formidable deterrents.

But President Benigno  “Pnoy” Aquino’s pre-May 1 speech rejecting any wage increase, announcing a hike in social security contributions by employees, and adding insult to injury by calling on workers to celebrate Labor Day as “good jobs day” rather than complaining about slave wages, insecure contractual jobs, back-breaking work and trade union repression, was enough to spur me to brave Manila’s mean streets once more in solidarity with working people nationwide.

En route to Quiapo church to attend the Labor Day mass celebrated by no less than Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, I witnessed traffic enforcers of Quezon City and policemen harassing a convoy of jeepneys ferrying rallyists from the outskirts of the city to the assembly point in Welcome Rotunda. They had confiscated the drivers’ licenses and only returned these when the people got riled up and after issuing traffic violation tickets.

I tried to mediate, to plead actually, with the policemen to allow the convoy to pass since they were not “out of line” in the strict sense of the word, i.e. plying a route outside their franchise for commercial purposes.  After all it was Labor Day, for christsake.

I was met with the deadpan excuse about “orders from higher ups” (mention was made of a General San Diego) and that land transportation regulations were superior to any claimed right to peaceful assembly.  To top it all, the policeman said the rallyists should have used “private vehicles” instead to avoid being accosted.  So this is how authorities encourage workers to “celebrate” their day, I told myself, fuming.

Finally made it in good time to attend the special high mass at the Quiapo Church graciously allowed by  Monsignor Jose Clemente Ignacio, parish priest, and even more graciously con-celebrated by Cardinal Tagle with about fifty priests led by Fr. Jose Dizon of Church Workers Solidarity Conference.  Kilusang Mayo Uno leaders, conscientized church people from the National Council of Churches in the Philippines, Ecumenical Bishops Forum and Promotion of Church People’s Response, social activists and fighters for workers’ rights and the everyday throng of churchgoers filled the pews and listened intently to the engaging homily.

Cardinal Tagle extolled the dignity and value of labor.  He underscored that Jesus Christ was not just the Son of God and the Son of Man, he was the son of a lowly carpenter.  Thus the worker partakes of Christ’s figure who originated from and lived out his brief life on earth not as a wealthy landowner, successful businessman or high-and-mighty government official but as a man of the working people. The good Cardinal underscored the primacy of labor over profit and capped his homily with profuse thanksgiving to all workers for their labor is what makes society possible.

After the mass, Catholic religious, Protestant pastors and lay ministers partook of a proletarian meal of rice, smoked fish, red egg and tomato laid out on long tables lined with banana leaves with workers and urban poor in a symbolic demonstration of solidarity for the hard life and even harder struggle of the people everywhere to liberate themselves from the clutches of deprivation, oppression and exploitation.

Overcome by the heat and feeling hunger pangs myself, I took leave of my companions to seek a place to cool off and take a bite of lunch.  But I ran into the main contingent of marchers who had come from converging points in the North of Manila with Makabayan senatorial candidate, Teddy Casino, KMU and GABRIELA leaders holding the marching streamer at the front.

I was swept up by the enthusiasm and the fortitude of the rallyists sweltering under the searing heat of the noonday sun and readily acquiesced to join the march as they gave me space to squeeze in.  Without even a hat to shield me but buoyed by the spirit of the marching column, I made the short but punishing walk to Liwasang Bonifacio.

Under the steady gaze of Gat Andres Bonifacio, the working people’s hero, more marching columns came one after the other, not just workers but farmers, students, government employees, teachers and health workers and the poorest of the poor from the slum areas of the metropolis with children in tow (for who would tend to them at home when even the mothers were marching that day).

I stayed long enough to hear the welcome songs and chants of protest and the symbolic smashing with outsized cardboard hammers of the coiled effigy of US President Barack Obama (the new face of Uncle Sam) and Pnoy as a prelude to its fiery end later at Mendiola Bridge fronting the Presidential Palace. I couldn’t stay for the speeches including a heartfelt message from Saranggani Representative Manny “Pacman” Pacquio, whose rags-to-riches story as a prize-fighter is the stuff of hungry men’s dreams.

I went home tired yet oddly serene in the thought that the broad ranks of the working people in the Philippines were persisting in fighting back.  Despite being battered by the anti-labor policies of government in collusion with foreign and domestic big business and buttressed by the neoliberal prescriptions of the World Bank-IMF-WTO, to wit: maintaining a cheap, docile workforce to entice foreign investments; labor export to ease joblessness and put a lid on social unrest; prioritizing debt servicing over social services; surrendering public utilities and other public goods to the profit-hungry maws of private capital; and oh, lest I forget, siccing the dogs of war on militant labor through the counterinsurgency program Oplan Bayanihan.

What did the Pnoy regime preoccupy itself with on the same day to show it was addressing the plight of the legions of the unemployed and underemployed?  Same as the regimes before it including that of  Arroyo from whom it took over pretty much the same anti-labor policies -- job fairs.  As if the problem was just a matter of the jobless not meeting up with their future employers.

From news accounts we get bare facts:  35, 765 registrants and 400,000 job openings; most applicants seeking jobs as service workers, clerks call center agents and unskilled workers; “even those with a degree apply for service crew position because is easier to get hired”; the jobs offered were contractual, two years for overseas jobs and six months for local ones; 1,274 hired on the spot nationwide; some applicants were not jobless but looking for better paying jobs.

What difference will this make to the close to 3 million unemployed and 8 million underemployed by official estimates, what more the numbers three times these made by independent research outfits?  The kinds of jobs being offered are clearly low quality, contractual and overwhelmingly in the service sector thus unmasking the underdeveloped state of the economy with manufacturing stagnant to 1950s level.

Is it any wonder that official poverty statistics, already understated (imagine P51 per person per day as poverty threshold in these trying times) have not been dented by multi-billion peso anti-poverty programs.  Is it such a surprise that the credit-rating agency upgrades, the well-stocked foreign currency reserves (thanks to the toiling overseas Filipino workers),  the bullish stock market and all the self-congratulatory back patting at Malacañang mean nothing, absolutely nothing, to the average Filipino worker and his family wallowing in want and misery? #

Published in Business World
3-4 May 2013