BY HERBERT VEGO
VICE PRESIDENT Jejomar Binay – a declared presidential aspirant – has repeatedly warned the Commission on Elections (Comelec) against reusing the so-called PCOS (precinct count optical scan) machines in the forthcoming 2016 presidential election for fear that it would be manipulated in his opponent’s favor. He could be correct.
But why is he complaining only now?
Was it by the grace of PCOS that he defeated Mar Roxas for vice president in 2010?
Was it via PCOS that his then unknown daughter Nancy won a Senate seat in 2013?
Of course we don’t expect Binay to say yes to the two questions, since it would insinuate his own complicity with the Comelec. But it’s an indication that he fears that the agency notorious for dagdag-bawas manipulation would “anoint” his opponent in 2016?
Take note that it would be a rematch between him and Roxas, but for a higher position.
Remember that in 2010, no less than part of the campaign machinery of then presidential candidate Noynoy Aquino – the so-called Noybi group – conspired against his running mate Roxas? “Noybi” is short-cut for Noynoy and Binay.
In the aftermath of the 2013 senatorial election, no less than presidential aunt Margarita “Tingting” Cojuangco had accused PNoy of having made a P30-million “cashunduan” with Commission on Elections (Comelec) chair Sixto Brillantes to rig the May 13, 2013 senatorial election. Allegedly as a result, nine out of 12 Team PNoy candidates (coalition of Liberal Party and allies) won.
Tingting had run under UNA but lost on 23rd place.
“The Team PNoy senatorial candidates were digitally elected and the real voters were disenfranchised,” she charged.
Whether or not she has axe to grind against her nephew Noynoy, her allegation is not without probative value. Her election watchdog group, Isang Bayan, Isang Boto, had been at the forefront of a fact-finding mission aimed at unearthing the ways and means that Comelec had employed to rig election returns, to wit: Printing of excess ballots to cover up and change the real and actual ballots so that manual count will match the apparent programmed results; pre-programming of PCOS and servers; and Comelec’s intentional disregard of safeguards like the so-called “source code” that could have prevented electronic cheating.
The Isang Bayan, Isang Boto watchdog, she said, had done manual counts in a number of precincts, which showed that while Team PNoy got padded votes, other candidates got reduced votes.
For example, she cited a precinct where “in the manual count, the leading senatorial candidate obtained 193 votes but in the PCOS count, the candidate got 388 votes or an additional 185 votes.”
Even if Tingting made no direct reference to Senator Grace Poe as the “leading senatorial candidate” there could be no doubt she was referring to her. Weeks before the May 13 election, the mind-conditioning surveys of the Social Weather Station (SWS) had placed her on the 10th spot – way behind Loren Legarda, Alan Peter Cayetano, Nancy Binay, Cynthia Villar, Francis Escudero, Bam Aquino, Koko Pimentel, JV Ejercito and Sonny Angara – and yet she emerged number one.
What could be the most logical explanation for the phenomenon?
Had SWS so underestimated the strength of Grace Poe that the “manipulators” had to pad her votes to the max?
I found it unimaginable that former Senator Richard Gordon lost the senatorial race for the first time. How could unheralded neophytes Nancy Binay and Bam Aquino have outpaced him?
As lawyers would have put it, res ipsa loquitor./PN
