Looking back

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

12/17/2012

Daily Tribune

The end of 2012 is in sight and it's another month of looking back and assessing our triumphs as well as setbacks. Failure is not in my lexicon, for as long as one is alive any obstacle to a goal is only momentary difficulty.
At this juncture I can say with satisfaction that we have made positive contributions to the public welfare this year, and these are in the triumph against the DoTC's previously announced rate hike plan, a plan the BS Aquino III government had wanted to implement as far back as 2011. We indefatigably and persistently bared the facts about the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) and Light Rail Transit's (LRT's) financial situation; i.e. that it is not losing money, that it in fact is making a profit given the operations and maintenance (O&M) cost of only P9.11/pax/trip against the P10 to P15 the MRT charges.
The LRT is equally viable without increases as the "farebox" ratio analysis of its cost of 1.39 for LRT 1 and 1.01 for LRT 2 as Arnold Padilla of "A Radical's Nut" blog explains, "A farebox ratio of 1.0 means that fare revenues cover 100 percent of O&M. … which means that collections from passengers cover more than 100 percent of O&M. This provides more statistical evidence to our argument that fare revenues can cover O&M but the total costs are bloated by debt." The bloated debt of LRT 1 and 2, and the MRT, comes from the onerous contracts entered into by the FVR and Arroyo governments.
The MRT and LRT projects have been sold many times over with profit being made each turnover while the commuters continue to subsidize these profits of the "oligarchs."

The second contribution we can report to our readers and our people is — the successful exposé of the Hocus PCOS (precinct count optical scan) scam in the 2010 elections. It took all of three years, from the time before the elections itself when we, along with watchdogs like the Philippine Computer Society, the CenPeg and the AES Watch, to the post election years, before the whole truth was revealed, and as the saying goes: "Truth Will Out," and ironically the culprits were caught by their own mouths. "A fish is caught by its mouth."
When PCOS provider Smartmatic TIM filed a suit against Dominion Voting Systems Inc. (DMSI), its hardware and software design provider, it stated that DMSI "failed to deliver fully functional technology for use in the 2010 Philippines national election," "failing to place in escrow the required source code, hardware design, and manufacturing information."

The Smartmatic suit against its technology supplier reveals that, contrary to its claims to qualify to supply the PCOS machines in the 2010 elections, it is only a marketing firm and not the owner of a voting system technology. That explains all the last minute problems, revisions and removal of safety features in 2010 when the real technology company didn't support Smartmatic. Now all is clear why Smartmatic and the Commission on Elections (Comelec) EC gave all sorts of excuses just to avoid an unconditional third party testing of the PCOS and source code; they put obstacles to access to the source code; removed the ultra-violet lamp ballot verification, the voter confirmation of votes receipt and the Board of Election Inspector's digital signature components because the Smartmatic machines were "make do" machines as they did not have the technology and design.

It must be recalled that the Comelec under Chairman Melo then repeatedly affirmed by various assertions Smartmatic's claim that it is the owner of the technology for the voting machine (PCOS), now it is clear that it is only a marketing company and that it lied along with the Comelec. It is also now confirms my suspicion of Melo's sudden resignation right after the 2010 elections — he knew this would blow up and provided himself an escape hatch by resigning early. Now Melo is ensconced comfortably as director with a grand sinecure at the Bases Conversion and Development Authority. A new development on this score is retired Gen. Flor Fianza's additional exposé of Melo's operations that undermined the 2010 elections which appeared in his column "Duty Calls," all about the "national service" misused in the 2010 elections.

In 2010 a group which included myself, lawyer Bono Adaza, Mr. Ado Pagliinawan and several others filed a petition with the Supreme Court (SC) to annul the results of the 2010 Elections due to the countless infirmities it suffered. The SC has not resolved the petition in the two years and a half that has passed. The SC is in a dilemma and is frozen into paralysis in this case because there can be no denying, given the factual bases to condemn the 2010 Elections, that democracy was waylaid in 2010. We're ready to force the issue in the New Year with the new evidence in hand.

(Watch GNN's HTL show, GNN Channel 8, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., 11:15 p.m. and Sunday 8 a.m., and over www.gnntv-asia.com: "A China-Philippines Update" with Chito Sta. Romana; tune to 1098AM radio Tuesday to Friday 5 to 6 p.m. http://newkatipunan.blogspot.com)