Men of a certain age vividly remember this saying: When America sneezes, the Philippines catches cold. The cultural component of that influence simply meant that what was vogue in America readily spread with the speed of a virus to the Philippines. The same was true with political trends. And Filipinos giddily adapted to that vogue thing in the United States.
Even from the realm of the political, that trending thing was an attempt at sabotage and chicanery.
That may be still true today.
In the midst of Donald Trump’s siege on the credibility of the recent US general elections that made him a rare, one-term president (the first in a quarter of a century), a Filipino election lawyer who was once chief of staff to the late former Commission on Elections (Comelec) chairman Sixto Brilliantes warned of a sinister attempt to place a rider in the 2021 General Appropriations Act (GAA). That rider, warned election lawyer Emil Maranon, would empower the Comelec to waive all safeguards on the acquisition of election equipment for the 2022 general elections.
(But there is a stark difference, though. Trump’s rage and whining and baseless cries of “rigged elections” have been imaginary and 100 percent fiction. The Philippine version may truly be sinister.)
There was no mention on who wanted the rider placed in the 2021 GAA. But whoever intended that, as the Bard wrote, only intended like Brutus and Brutus was only capable of vehement intent.
So, what was clearly the vehement intent of the rider to waive the safeguards provided for under Republic Act (RA) 9369, the law on automated elections, on the acquisition of election-related equipment?
Without the usual vetting and testing on the safety component of the voting machines and equipment for the automated polls, the sanctity of the 2022 elections would be a tenuous, vulnerable proposition. With the waiver in place, the machines procured can be altogether unsafe and vulnerable to electoral cheats. In automated polls, the credibility of the entire electoral process rests on the credibility of the machines. Garbage machines will turn out garbage results. Machines that are 100 percent fraud-proof guarantee the safety and credibility of the process, as simple as that.
Considering that the bedrock political process upon which the stability and legitimacy of a democracy rests is the electoral process, an assault on the machines and electoral integrity is an assault on the democratic process itself. That is how important fraud-free election machines are to the survival and legitimacy of our democracy.
Mr. Maranon alerted the Senate, not the House of Representatives (HoR), for reasons only known to himself. Maybe the HoR is a suspect institution. Maybe the HoR is so engrossed with pork barrel allocation that it may have no time for protecting the bedrock institutions of democracy. The senators, to a man, vowed to be on alert and expunge the rider once found. The constitutionality of such a rider is a question mark, according to the senators. A provision of a general law such as the GAA 2021 cannot amend a law such as RA 9369, a special law.
The senators have made strong commitments that the rider would neither wash nor pass. But this episode, given that former Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Lardizabal sounded a secondary alert on the rider, is scary based on our electoral history. “Hello Garci” remains a terrifying episode in the country’s electoral history and never again should it take place.
We are in the 21st century and It is quite easy to write the manual for electoral safeguards, in the context of automated elections. The available technology is advanced and sophisticated, with the built-in safeguards. The gist of the manual can be these:
First, kick out Smartmatic for good and send the antiquated machines packing to Venezuela or wherever. Bye-bye, good riddance, whatever.
Second, carry out an international bidding process that would enable the Comelec to procure the best election-related machines money can buy. And hire the best consultants with the legal, technological and anti-fraud resumes. The budgetary process should allot the kind of money that would enable the Comelec to hold world-class and secure elections. This is a spending item that should be given all the funding requirements.
Consult a cybersecurity expert like the former tech executive who led the cybersecurity unit of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the US November elections. Remember Chris Krebs, the cybersecurity expert of the DHS who countered Trump’s election rants with the statement that the elections just held were the “most secure “in recent history.” Krebs, who was fired by Trump for doing his job, is a Republican and a Trump appointee. But he is one of the “country-first Republicans” who thwarted at every turn Trump’s effort to sow doubts on the integrity of the November elections. The Comelec can consult Mr. Krebs or the likes of him.
The best election technology and the best technical and safety expertise will also silence the ridiculous call for so-called “hybrid elections” that combine machines and manual counting. The manual, nonautomated elections of the past presented at every turn an opportunity to rig the process and commit treason-level electoral fraud.
What guarantee fraud-free elections are fraud-free machines and the nonpartisan, country-first electoral overseers both steeped in love of country and the need to uphold and count the popular will of the electorate.
“Hybrid” will be a recipe for electoral disaster for contested elections, for the grim slog of the electoral process. Don’t venture into that vulnerable territory.