DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/13/2013
The Commission on Elections' (Comelec) promised source code finally arrives in Manila less than a week before Election Day. Coming three years after it should have been delivered to the voting public for inspection and put in escrow at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, it is now too late to subject it to serious scrutiny. This much has been pointed out by Philippine Computer Society president Toti Casiño, a view backed not only by the organization's 3,000 members but also by various groups such as the Automated Election System Watch (AES Watch) and many others. Similarly, the Facebook commentaries of internet activist Adriano Solomon, which point out that the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines for today's elections had been sent out by the thousands with their source codes since April, question if there is any similarity between these and the source code now said to have been delivered by Dominion Voting Systems.
Other than a face-saving gesture for the Comelec and Smartmatic, the Dominion Voting Systems' delivery of this source code is totally meaningless and downright insulting to the intelligence of the public. Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes had the usual temerity to say, "All those who say that there is no source code should now keep their peace," when it was he who had dilly-dallied on it. The question now is whether the source code (either for 2010 or today) is reliable, trustworthy, and conforms to the automated elections law — something that cannot be as it has yet to undergo public scrutiny.
Dominion Voting Systems, for its part, is also being very dubious for delaying the source code delivery, which, if likened to a basketball game, was made only in the last 10 seconds.
Have Dominion and Smartmatic been playing cat-and-mouse game with the Filipino people all along with their Delaware court suit to cover for a suspected 2010 election fraud, which will continue for as long as we use their PCOS system?
Stranger still was the sum of money that had to be forked out for Dominion's delivery. According to news reports, it was put into effect only after Smartmatic agreed to pay $10 million — an amount first offered by Brillantes, which had to be retracted as Comelec was later claimed to have no budget for it.
Even if it appears that Smartmatic had paid for it, this episode clearly demonstrates that the PCOS election system (under then Chairman Jose Melo in 2010 and now Brillantes) has reduced Philippine elections into a process by which foreign companies can hold the country's democracy hostage and release it only upon payment of ransom. But even more skeptical and technically capable minds go deeper than the scandalous financial aspect of the Dominion-Smartmatic scenario. Information Technology Foundation of the Philippines (ITFP) president Maricor Akol once commented that Dominion may be very coy about the source code as its examination may reveal manipulation for BS Aquino III by the United States.
Questions about conflict-of-interest voting machine companies have come to light in the US where many of these companies are based. As one site, The Landes Report, writes: "Foreigners, convicted criminals, office holders, political candidates, and news media organizations can and do own these companies. It appears that these companies are dominated by members of the Republican Party and foreign investors… Sequoia (UK), Accenture/Election.com (UK-Bermuda), EVS (Japan) and N.V. Nederlandsche Apparatenfabriek (Netherlands). Election.com was formerly owned by Osan Ltd., a Saudi Arabian firm. Many voting machine companies appear to share managers, investors and equipment which raises questions of conflict-of-interest and monopolistic practices." So who are really behind Smartmatic, which has frequently misrepresented itself, and Dominion?
Popular US Establishment critic Alex Jones of Prison Planet wrote an article ("CIA-owned voting machines ensure Bush victory in 2004") where he stated that the "American vote-count is controlled by three major corporate players — Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia (all bought out by Dominion)… These companies… glitch-riddled systems… technology that leaves no paper trail at all… are almost laughably open to manipulation, according to corporate whistle-blowers and computer scientists at Stanford, Johns Hopkins and other universities." The prize for the US in controlling Philippine elections is subversion of the very leadership positions of the country without having to start a costly local invasion such as in Afghanistan or Syria, and getting the success of the BangsaMoro, Moro Islamic Liberation Front, Exxon-Mobil, Mindanao-Sulu Sea oil plot, along with diplomatic coups and tensions against China, etc.
Toti Casiño, in my GNN show, concluded with me that Philippine elections using the PCOS are simply circuses. My other guest who gave his usual "fearful forecast," Linggoy Alcuaz, agreed, saying that the "constitutional circus" starts with the manipulated voter preference surveys (where certain bets are favored with top rankings in early surveys to give them an early boost) and ends with the manipulated PCOS elections.
Although Philippine elections had always been manipulated, particularly from the time of Ramon Magsaysay when the CIA's Edward Landsdale set up the National Citizens' Movement for Free Elections to defeat recalcitrant Elpidio Quirino and for the American Manufacturers Association-funded Diosdado Macapagal to defeat "Filipino First" President Carlos P. Garcia, their manipulation has become infinitely more sophisticated with today's "source(ery) code."
We can take David Niven's advice to "Keep the circus going inside you, keep it going, don't take anything too seriously, it'll all work out in the end." Or we can start wising up by reading Stefan Halper's The Beijing Consensus: How China's Authoritarian Model Will Dominate the Twenty-first Century.
(Tune in to 1098 AM, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Destiny Cable Channel 8, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m.; also visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com)
