Truth will out, too

EDITORIAL

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07/24/2010

It really was time to have Commission on Elections (Comelec) commissioners and their officials, as well as Smartmatic-TIM officials criminally charged because for too long, they have engaged in criminal actions and have gotten away with it.

The worst part of it all is the fact that every step of the way, the public warnings were made yet none of these commissioners paid heed to these warnings and kept on claiming that security features were in place; that the source code was reviewed and okayed by SysTest Lab; that there will no longer be electoral cheating; that they are on top of the situation, and will be conducting the polls without a hitch.

All that time, they were lying to the Filipino people and worse, kept the people in the dark, even when they knew they would once again, rob the Filipino people of their sovereign will.

The Philippine Computer Society (PCS), in a complaint lodged before the Office of the Ombudsman, named as respondents Comelec Chairman Jose Melo, Commissioners Gregorio Larrazabal, Rene Sarmiento, Nicodemo Ferrer, Armando Velasco, Lucenito Tagle and Elias Yusoph. Also named was Executive Director Jose Tolentino and directors Ester Roxas and James Jimenez.

The Technical Evaluation members were also charged. Cited were Commission on Information and Communication Technology chairman Ray Anthony Roxas-Chua, Timothy Diaz de Rivera and Dennis Villorente.

On the side of Smartmatic-TIM Corp., PCS said Smartmatic Asia president Cesar Flores and electoral systems manager Heider Garcia should also be investigated along with their Filipino partners, Jose Mari Antuñez and Nilo Cruz of TIM, on grounds of unethical conduct and graft and corruption.

They were all accused of colluding and conspiring to breach laws on automated elections and government procurement, among others.

The complaint accused officials of the Comelec and Smartmatic of entering into the P7.2-billion contract that PCS said turned out to be prejudicial to the government.

PCS also noted that even with the numerous delays in Smartmatic-TIM’s deliverables, the Comelec never sanctioned Smartmatic, even when the contract stated it would be fined for every delay.

Similarly, PCS said the Comelec officials violated procurement laws when they downgraded several security features of the automated elections system which was important in the interest of the public that expected to have an accurate and honest presidential elections.

PCS also cited the discovery that the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines had, from the start, a console port that allowed external manipulation of the machine, which is a violation of the security requirements set in the law and rendered “the recent elections completely open to malicious control.”

It is impossible for the poll commissioners and their IT people not to have known that the PCOS had a console port that would bring about external manipulation of the machine. As it turned out, there certainly was enough proof that the vote was externally manipulated.

Even worse, Smartmatic officials knew that there was the existence of the console port and that external manipulation was possible. Why then was this not even brought out? For that matter, why did poll officials, from the chairman to the Comelec IT group, allow the removal of all safety features in the machines, and even in the ballots, knowing that this was much too dangerous and would open the floodgates to widescale electoral fraud?

The answer to that is perhaps that their intention all along was to ensure that electronic fraud would be committed to ensure the victory of certain national and local candidates — plus the money to be made from it.

All these officials probably thought they could get away with undetected electoral fraud, just as then Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano and his boys in the poll body thought they could get away with massive cheating in the presidential elections of 2004.

The truth surfaced in Garci’s case, a year later.

It will surface again, in the case of Melo’s Comelec and Smartmatic.

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