By Herbert Vego
THIS writer stands firm in his belief that we the people did not choose Ferdinand “BBM” Marcos Jr. and Sara Duterte for president and vice-president, respectively. Most likely it was a powerful politician who had willed their “win” through commercial pollsters, Smartmatic vote-counting machines and the Commission on Elections (Comelec).
Who could have enabled the emergence of ex-convict Robin Padilla as the “No. 1” in the “magic 12” among senatorial candidates?
As of the moment, only one opposition candidate, Riza Hontiveros is in that circle.
Who would have thought that re-electionist Senator Richard Gordon would fall out of the “magic 12” in the initial canvassing?
Remember, President Rodrigo Duterte had threatened to campaign against Gordon while the latter as chair of the Senate blue ribbon committee was investigating the “overprice” of medical items bought by the government at P11 billion from Pharmally.
If you find the aforesaid premises hard to believe, why swallow the “let’s move on” cliché? Forgive and forget the wrongdoings?
Was it okay that the Comelec’s unofficial “quick count,” as early as two hours after the 7:00 p.m. deadline for voting the other day (May 9), was announcing the BBM and Sara tandem as the run-away winners against the Leni Robredo-Kiko Pangilinan tandem?
As of yesterday morning, the broadcast and TV media were concluding that with already more than 28 million votes against Robredo’s 14 million votes counted, Marcos was definitely winning.
But text messages coming from unconfirmed sources were pointing out that a hired Chinese information technology (IT) expert was behind the statistically improbable programming of the Comelec transparency server to produce periodic results with 68% additional votes for Marcos and 32% for Robredo popping up every 15 minutes; and that the only way to disprove this anomaly is to canvass the hard copies of all precinct results.
Meanwhile, the local radio stations as of yesterday morning were still airing results from polling centers in the city and province of Iloilo with Robredo and Pangilinan leading.
We had expected the same phenomenon elsewhere because of the heavy turnout of followers trooping to the Leni-Kiko rallies.
I am disappointed but not surprised. In my last three columns before the May 9 event, I had expressed doubts on the credibility of the election process. First, I questioned the acceptability of surveys which could simply be in response to its sponsors. As admitted by Pulse Asia president Ronald Holmes, his company was getting at least five million pesos per survey without elaborating.
Second, I traced the likelihood of the BBM-Sara “uniteam” winning by fraud based on mind-conditioning influencers, namely the orchestrated surveys of SWS, Pulse Asia, Laylo Research, Publicus Asia and Octa Research.
Third, I recalled three past fraudulent elections done during the time of BBM’s dad, the late dictator Ferdinand Edralin Marcos, namely the 1978 election to the Interim Batasang Pambansa which the then First Lady Imelda Marcos topped and the former Senator Ninoy Aquino lost; the first post-martial law presidential election where re-electionist President Marcos bested his own friend Alejo Santos; and the February 7, 1986 “snap election” pitting Marcos against Cory Aquino, which was marred by the walkout of Comelec tabulators who could not “stomach” being directed to produce incorrect numbers.
While it may never be proven that the outgoing president has a hand behind the on-going electoral drama, it is no secret that all incumbent Comelec commissioners are Duterte appointees; that one of them, George Garcia, was BBM’s lawyer; that despite his published unsavory remarks against BBM being “a weak leader” and “a spoiled child,” there exists the possibility of “spare tire” Sarah replacing him.
Moreover, Digong knows that BBM would not raise the issue of China’s occupation of the Scarborough Shoal and other territories at the West Philippine Sea.
That makes BBM and Sara the new “friends” of China in the Philippines.
-oOo-
IT WAS A SUCCESS FOR MORE POWER
KUDOS to MORE Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power) President/CEO Roel Castro for keeping Iloilo City without brownouts during the conduct of the May 9 election.
Last Sunday or one day before the electoral process, Castro and MORE Power’s deputy head of network services Engr. Bailey del Castillo graced our “Reklamo Publiko” program on Aksyon Radyo, where they assured us about the memorandum of agreement signed with the Comelec to make sure of a “no outage” intervention during and immediately after the election through full-force of personnel (125 individuals) on 24/7 rotation.
Well, indeed, that important day has come and gone with no recorded incidence of power interruption in all 66 polling centers.
They have accomplished that mission perfectly. So with more reasons now that we expect AMORE to live up to its well-earned reputation as distributor of the cheapest electricity in the Philippines at P7.22 per kilowatt hour.
Like all other distribution utilities, MORE Power is mandated by the Department of Energy (DOE) to maintain reliable and uninterrupted supply of electricity during elections to ensure the integrity of the vote-counting machines and transmission of election results.
Among the strategies undertaken by MORE Power’s Task Force Election were preventive maintenance of all power facilities, clearing of lines, replacement of defective poles and over-loaded distribution transformers. They maintained close coordination with the school officials.
In his post-election message as reported by Joy Fantilaga, Castro addressed the task force, “I would like to congratulate everyone for a very successful work we did in ensuring the unhampered flow of electricity during the campaign period and on the day of election, canvassing and transmission. Now let’s go back to normal.”
