Amazing News

by Ducky Paredes
from MALAYA

“It was hearsay, even double hearsay — since he did not say whether his source knew of what he was telling or did he also just hear about it also from someone else.” – Ducky Paredes

I am amazed.

Imagine that just about anyone who has a story to tell or a story he heard from someone else or who heard of something third or fourth hand can go to the Congress of the Philippines to tell us all what he thinks he knows about the just concluded first ever national computerized elections in this part of the world, which I thought was genuinely successful. That amazes me.

What they have to say is even more amazing. One witness came to talk so covered up so as to be unidentifiable that he looked to the spectators like a Koala Bear that led others to say that he was a pa-ko-wala, Pilipino for a “red herring” in spy lingo.

He told the congressmen that he could change the results that the PCOS machine would give out using some secret way that even computer experts and Smartmatic, the owner and the creator of the PCOS say is an impossible task. It simply cannot be done. Period.

I believe Smartmatic on this point. Certainly, we would not have committed to pay the overpriced lease charges on the PCOS machines, if they were not secure and could, after all, be vandalized so easily by Koalas.

But the testimony is now there — for all time –for all to see, many decades later, in the annals of our Legislature.

A former congressman told our present congressmen “there are people who participated in the selling of the election.” There are those who actually sold the election. You pay them and you win? Really?

The congressman explained that someone told him about a group that went to a person who was close to one of the nine presidential candidates. They allegedly (according to his source) offered their service to make his presidential candidate win.

Said the congressman: “He was told if you have one billion pesos we can make your candidate win.”

That was not the end of his tale: “They made the rounds of the national candidates, one of the candidates supposedly bought the deal.”

Of course, as far as the former congressman’s tale went, it was next to pointless. It was hearsay, even double hearsay — since he did not say whether his source knew of what he was telling or did he also just hear about it also from someone else.

My doubts about this is that I cannot believe that the majority of the nine presidentiables were approached and that not one of the nine used that piece of intelligence to blow the campaign wide-open by spilling the beans that the election was for sale. Such a revelation would have earned for the candidate and whistle-blower a week of headlines for himself. He might even have pulled himself up to the top of the pyramid. What candidate would not have taken that golden opportunity?

Clearly, if we accept these stories, there is nothing else that we can do as a nation except dump those PCOS machines in the sea, send those Venezuelans of Smartmatic back where they came from and call for new elections using purely paper ballots to be counted by hand, accompanied with the usual shenanigans that we wanted our elections to be rid of — which is the only reason why we are paying Smartmatic the billions that we promised them.

And, who would rule the country in the interim? Don’t even think about that and don’t wish her on us ever again!

* * *

Apparently, Chairman Jose Melo of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) has written Acting Justice Secretary Alberto Agra asking the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate problems pertaining to the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines last May 10.

Secretary Agra says he will order the National Bureau of Investigation to look into this matter.

Perhaps, the NBI ought to first find out who, if anyone among those who lost in the elections, is talking about what he actually knows, rather than what he wants us to believe.

* * *

Another thing that amazes me is a story from another morning paper that says: “Former Tarlac Rep. Jose “Peping” Cojuangco said he was all for the legalization of jueteng because his poor constituents had been complaining about the lack of a pastime.”

The man clamoring for a nation-wide jueteng operations is the president of the Philippine Olympic Committee and the maternal uncle of the still unproclaimed new President. The POC President apparently wants a “robust jueteng operation” because “unlike more affluent individuals who have cockfighting and horse racing,” the poor can’t openly avail themselves of jueteng, if it continues to be done on the sly and is considered illegal.

The one thing that saves the day for me is that. Clearly, there are other things that the poor can be doing — like doing other work than waiting for the jueteng collector to do his rounds. This can happen if the economic plans that the new President will soon be launching will work.

Of course, this will take a while to set in but opening up jueteng for all is clearly not the way to go. We already have all sorts of gambling games from the government and all sorts of consumer products that, like jueteng only requires a little bit of luck to make one a millionaire. These things have not made a dent on our poverty levels.

In fact, perhaps, the one thing that we ought to make into a mantra is that the way for the country to move forward is for every single one of us to work productively so as to improve our country’s productivity. This should be what all of us Pinoys ought to be doing every single waking hour. Maybe then, we could move this country forward. The level of personal productivity spells the difference between successful and unsuccessful countries.

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hvp 05.25.10

Readers who missed a column can access www.duckyparedes.com/blogs. This is updated daily. Your reactions are welcome at duckyparedes@yahoo.com