Category: elections

COMELEC, coincidences, crossroads

COMELEC wants us to believe it was pure coincidence that smartmatic’s marlon garcia tweaked some code (to change ? to ñ) just when bongbong marcos’s 1 million-vote lead started to dwindle and leni robredo started catching up, allegedly in smooth flows, that now sees robredo ahead by 200k or so and claiming victory.

pure coincidence daw.  nagkataon lang.  walang koneksyon.  i’m sorry but in occult thought all coincidences are significant.  sharing here some of my essay Falling chandeliers and other omens that inquirer published back in 1998 soon after erap’s inauguration when he first stepped into the palace for his first cabinet meeting.

Filipinos are a superstitious people. We see meaningful relationships between apparently unconnected events that happen to occur at the same time or in close sequence: the number 13 and the Estrada presidency, the chandelier and the inaugural, the chandelier and the number 13. It comes from an intuitive grasp of Carl Jung’s concept of synchronicity which, going beyond science (cause-and-effect), “takes the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more than mere chance” and which is the very principle underlying the use of the I Ching and astrology (among other occult arts) in making sense of “the essential situation prevailing” for any one person or group at any moment in time.

This is why we continue to be disturbed by the story of a Palace chandelier crashing to the floor just a few seconds after President Estrada passed beneath it. The President had just taken his oath that noon in Barasoain. He had just arrived in Malacañang that afternoon and was on his way to swear in the new Cabinet officials when the chandelier crashed. Happening as it did in the first few hours of the new administration, it changed the quality and temper not just of the rest of the day – hitherto happy and hopeful – but of the rest of the presidential term.

Clearly, a warning. If it were not an attempt on the President’s life, then a warning of danger, of sinister human forces at play. If an accident, then of forces less menacing but quite as startling and disturbing. The message is, expect the unexpected, a pattern has been set.

the rest is history.  we all know what happened to the erap presidency.  which is to say that COMELEC ignores allegations of electronic cheating at its own, and the nation’s, peril. COMELEC asks too much of the citizenry when its officers ask us to take their word for it, when they ask for our trust, a trust they still have to earn.

i know a recount, or re-feed, or an audit — whatever it will take to give us the true count of votes cast for president, vice-president, and senators — will take time, and i’ve been expecting COMELEC to play the no-more-time card.  but the president will be proclaimed in time, no doubt, and we just have to make sure nothing happens to him, and maybe stop stressing him out, lol, until we have a vice-president.

but seriously.  this is too important to sweep under the proverbial rug yet again.  i hope leni wins, but fairly and squarely please.  if bongbong has the numbers pala, well, it’s our failure, not his.

meanwhile, the Left is at a crossroads, too.  that was a stroke of genius indeed on the part of the incoming prez.  in-out na lang basta ang mga komunista, lol.  and the challenge is to level up, guys, show us your stuff, or forever hold your peace.

Elections over but not the count

Teddy Locsin, Jr.

… It is said that any irregularities or peculiarities in the conduct or count of the automated election, must be substantiated by those who point them out. Only idiots say that. The only duty of voters is to point out seeming irregularities—and immediately the onus shifts to the COMELEC to explain them away—but never, never, never to brush them off. It is possible that after trying in vain to eliminate the tremendous lead of Duterte, by knocking out VCMS in parts of Mindanao, Visayas, Luzon, and all of Metro Manila including Quezon City, the cheaters gave up. They turned their attention to lesser positions like the VP and the Senate, Congress and local officials. But if we leave it at that, then basically we should hold incontestably honest elections only for the president and let him appoint all the rest. That would be cheaper.

No, the burden is entirely on the COMELEC to answer each and every concern. No burden lies on the suspicious to substantiate their suspicions. But what about the presumption of innocence? Doesn’t that extend to the COMELEC? Sure, if you went to a lousy local law school. The presumption of innocence does not apply to institutions nor to anything or anybody else but an individual accused until he is found guilty beyond all reasonable doubt in a court of law after a fair trial.

What about the lesser presumption of governmental regularity? Again, if you went to the right law school that does not mean that government acts are presumptively regular. It merely begs the question whether government acts are regular when the irregular is the new normal like now.

So by all means demand the answers to all objections, allay all fears, dispel all suspicions, and if need be recount the vice presidential election—and if you ask me the senatorial as well. Because a republic cannot long live with a fundamental mistrust of itself, with the self-consuming suspicion that people en banc are laughing behind their ample sleeves all the way to the bank.

That close race

Jojo Robles

… The website Get Real Philippines (getrealphilippines.com) has noted “the almost algorithmic way with which Robredo chipped away at the initial one-million-vote lead of Marcos over several hours since the voting closed.” According to the article, the statistical aberration “has attracted the attention of many observers.”

On Facebook, the article said, Benjamin Vallejo Jr. “plotted the progressive decrease of Marcos’s lead over Robredo over time and found an almost perfect linear correlation.” “The correlation plotted a straight-path downward trajectory for Marcos’s lead,” the article said.

“Di kapani-paniwala [Unbelievable]!” said Vallejo, a faculty member of the University of the Philippines currently working as an exchange professor at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin, noting the perfectly straight line….

Read more…

Binay redux

By Ma. Lourdes N. Tiquia

Jejomar Binay, vice president of the Philippines, delivered a prepared speech for a total of 21 minutes with all the trappings of the higher office save the seal. He was focused on the bigger audience and contrasted himself with those who threw mud at him. Still, I maintain that he effectively repositioned himself and reframed the debate. An astute pivot was used.

Read on…