Ducky Paredes

Malaya (12.20.05)
“The decision to disqualify the machines already bought and fully paid for by the Comelec was one of the worst decisions of the Supreme Court.”

Computerize Again?

by Ducky Paredes

There is talk again of computerizing our elections. But, who would be foolish enough to deal with the Philippines when a perfected contract that has already been paid for and all the purchased goods delivered can still be nullified by the Supreme Court with a demand that the money already paid be returned to the government.

Why was this cancelled? The machines delivered had greater capacity and were three times cheaper than the machines offered by another bidder. They were also adjudged as 100 % passing by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST). Each machine was tested and passed individually.
With that as the Philippine experience, who would dare sell us counting and other election machines? Only someone very foolish would still deal with us on voting machines. Serious sellers will look for business elsewhere. The Philippines, as a buyer of electoral machines, has proven to be an unreliable customer.
To make things even murkier, the Senate is now thinking of letting another entity buy the machines for the Commission on Elections to use because the Senate says that it cannot trust the people in Comelec to do the right thing. Actually, if one were to think about this, it was the Supreme Court that showed that it could not be trusted.
Whatever cheating happened in the 2004 elections would not have taken place if the S.C. did not disqualify these machines. These would have given all of the election results within 36 hours. That would not have given the dagdag-bawas gang time to do their evil. The Supreme Court decision made dagdag-bawas possible. In fact, there is room for suspicion that the S.C. did this knowing that this was the only way for Gloria Arroyo to win in 2004, by massive cheating,
The decision to disqualify the machines already bought and fully paid for by the Comelec was one of the worst decisions of the Supreme Court. Because of that decision, we have branded the Philippines as a customer that anyone selling modern equipment should not touch.
So, how can we still computerize? The idea now is to spend another P1.6 billion even while the machines already bought and paid for by the Comelec are stored in some warehouse while the government tries to force the seller to give back its money and take back the machines. But, why should the seller accommodate us when they have been paid in full and they have delivered all of the goods. In fact, there were not even any complaints about these machines. They worked so well.
But, the SC still ruled that the machines would not work. Shouldn’t it be the SC that should be asked to explain itself? It is the SC that cannot be trusted to do the right thing, not the Comelec.
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In investigating Garci, the House of Representatives may be taking on more than it can handle. This is not to say that Garci is smarter than our congressmen. He is not. Because of the way that Garci is telling his so-called testimony, however, the job that the congressmen must do is that of ferreting out the truth about the events that led to the cheating in the 2004 elections.
Garci will not want the truth to surface. If he can succeed in pulling the wool over our congressmen’s eyes, this investigation and most other investigations that congress will attempt in the future will have been forever discredited and they will become what Malacanang says our congressmen and senators are: hindrances to the progress of this country.
The best argument, too, for modernizing our election methods and purchasing electoral machines will be if our congressmen can pin Garci down and, thus, elicit the truth about the cheating that he and Gloria did. If the elections, after all, were as clean as Garci says they were, why should any modernization of our elections even be attempted. If the electoral system is good, why change it? If it works, why fix it?
Of course, we all know – despite Garci and Gloria’s denials — that our electoral system needs an overhaul. But, if even what happened in 2004 cannot be discovered by our legislators, what would be the basis for spending still another P1.6 billion to change the system.
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As long as the Senate is now seriously looking into computerizing the elections, the first thing that the Senate ought to do is to look closely at what happened in the bidding, purchase, testing and payment of the machines that the Comelec procured for the 2004 elections.
The machines are in storage and can easily be bought out and examined. The Senate can get experts to look them over and do an analysis. Senators can ask the DOST about the tests that were done on each machine that caused the DOST to give each machine a 100% rating.

The Senate can turn itself into a fact-finding body. The Supreme Court ruled, without ascertaining the facts, that the machines failed its testing by the DOST. In fact, the SC without any basis at all, also ruled that the machines would not work. The SC, as it often says, is not a trier of facts. Yet, here, and in other decisions, the SC creates facts out of thin air and makes these new facts the bases for its decisions. The Senate now has the opportunity to vet the SC’s methods.
The Senate owes it ot us to ascertain the facts. Instead, the Senate, like an ostrich with its head buried in the sand, would rather take the word of the SC as if the justices were the Holy Mother Church speaking ex cathedra and dishing out decisions that are to be considered as dogma. That might work for religions. It should not be the rule in governance, which should be based on factual truth.
If the Senate out of fear of the S.C. finds that it has no stomach for finding out the truth about these voting machines, wouldn’t we all be better off seeing this supposedly august body abolished?
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Readers who missed a column can go to http://ducky.paredes-ohana.org. Your reactions are welcome at duckyparedes@gmail.com.
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hvp (12.19.05)

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