One who was proved to have cheated massively during the 2004 presidential elections cannot be seen as wanting to leave a legacy of clean and honest automated polls, even as this is being claimed to be Gloria Arroyo’s "centerpiece" legacy.
No more cheating of the past through automated polls when it was she who was caught on tape, talking with her election cheating operator poll Commissioner Virgilio "Garci" Garcillano to ensure that her votes would be padded by over a million votes to ensure her win? Gimme a break!
The whole cheating operations were planned long before the presidential campaign season started. The fact alone that she had positioned her political ally, Benjamin Abalos Sr., as the Commission on Elections (Comelec) chief already proves this.
Also, despite public objections of her appointing Garcillano as commissioner, due to his unsavory reputation in elections, she insisted on appointing him, and just after Congress adjourned.
We all know what happened during the 2004 presidential elections. The cheating done by Gloria and her operators, including the military and police, was caught on tape, with the Filipino nation having heard it all.
Why would anyone trust her and her aides’ claims on her wanting to leave the nation with the legacy of honest and orderly elections when even during the 2007 senatorial elections, the poll cheating persisted? After all, she need not have engaged in yet another round of poll cheating, since she was no longer in the running. But she did, all because she wanted a Senate to be dominated by her allies, just as it is with the House of Representatives.
It is more logical to believe that she will do all she can by way of cheating in the polls, and through massive electronic fraud, to get whoever she will be anointing to ensure her protection from suits.
As things stand, it is clear that automated polls are being pushed by Gloria and her Comelec because they realize that, given the Smartmatic method of being able to change the results of the count, and with the Comelec commissioners and the poll watchdog all clueless about how the cheating will be done--and with written ballot trail of the fraud, Gloria’s plan to get her anointed will breeze to a fraudulent victory, without any protest from the public. At least that is what they think. What they don’t know is that they are certainly flirting with great danger.
There is bound to be big trouble come election day, if Comelec insists on proceeding with its plan of nationwide automated polls. The plan to compress 250,000 precincts to a mere 82,000 is already an invitation to a massive disenfranchisement of voters.
This would be the first time the Filipino electorate will be voting through a thoroughly unfamiliar voting system. This will be the first time voters will not be able to witness the counting process, something that Filipino voters are used to doing, as they stay on in the precincts after the polls close to watch the counting.
The Comelec hardly has the reputation of having conducted successfully, at any time in its history, an information drive.
Even today, in its drive to get voters to register for the 2010 polls, very few have registered, whether they be old or new voters.
Yet there went the Comelec, saying that this is really the Filipino way — a last minute type of registration.
You can bet that even on the last day, there won’t be that many voters who would be registering and they would still be looking for their names in the list but won’t find them or their precincts — precisely because the information campaign of the Comelec would again be a failure.
That Malacañang is pushing full poll automation is suspicious enough. That the presidential crony is part of the automated election project adds to that suspicion. Even more suspicious is the Comelec’s insistence on having Smartmatic, which has a tainted reputation in automated elections, to conduct the automated polls, with the Comelec’s role limited to just reading the count and making the vote count official.
If at this time, suspicions are already rife, what makes the Comelec think that it can pass off as credible such an election in 2010 when explanations are not satisfactory?
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