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Comelec: No national election results in 48 hours

By Leila B. Salaverria
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:40:00 04/16/2010

MANILA, Philippines—In the automated elections on May 10, the mindset is that the winners would be known in a jiffy.

Well, not exactly.

Results will be posted pronto in real time as they are spewed out by a computing machine on a website, to be announced later, but these will be from each one of the 76,000 precincts nationwide.

You’ll have to do the addition yourself to know what’s up.

After saying again and again that the results of the automated election system (AES)—meaning contest outcomes—will be known within 48 hours, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Thursday said for the first time that in fact this was unlikely to happen.

Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez, speaking at a forum of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (Focap), said the poll body was not required to add up the results of the precinct voting or to provide a running tally on the website.

“We’ll provide the precinct data. That’s more than we’ve ever done before,” Jimenez said.

It doesn’t compute

Alfredo Pascual, convenor of AES Watch, said that the data from the individual precincts, without any summation, would not be of much use considering the sheer number of candidates.

“Try adding that up,” said Pascual. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

He also pointed out the possibility that around 30 percent of the counting machines might encounter glitches, as the Comelec itself has confirmed. In which case, he said, a manual count would have to be done.

Random audit

In addition, Pascual said that before the proclamation of winners, a “random manual audit” would be undertaken by the board of election inspectors.

This means that in each legislative district, one precinct will be selected and the results there will be manually tabulated, totaled and compared with the automated count to check its accuracy.

Mechanics of this exercise have yet to be hammered out with barely three weeks before election day.

Cesar Flores, spokesperson for Smartmatic-TIM, said the company, as part of its P7.2-billion contract with the Comelec, will make available the website where the results from the precincts will be posted as they come in.

Website for precinct results

Flores, in an interview with the Inquirer, said the website will be announced a few days before the elections.

On the website for the 2008 Venezuelan elections, the company showed consolidated results, Flores said, but the Comelec had refused to put consolidated results on its website to discourage trending while the proclamation of national winners is pending.

The Comelec, he said, does not want to be accused of overstepping the duties of the Congress, which counts and proclaims the winners of the presidential and vice presidential races.

Jimenez said that the Comelec would announce the results of its tally after the canvassing at the municipal and provincial levels are completed, which is expected to be about two to three days after the elections. But the Comelec is only authorized to proclaim the winners up to the senatorial level, he said.

The proclamation of the president and vice president would have to be done by Congress, which is tasked with canvassing the results and which would only convene on May 30.

At the moment, Jimenez said, the poll body’s plan is to just post the precinct results on the website, whose name would only be disclosed on the eve of the elections for security purposes.

The data on the website will play an important part, he said, because it provides transparency and helps in fact-checking.

Additional burden

When asked why the poll body would not sum up the results, Jimenez said the Comelec was not required to do so. “As far as transparency is concerned, all of the data is there.”

He also said that if the results of the summation would be included on website, there would have to be a canvassing program included on it. This would be an additional burden for the site, he added.

The absence of an official summation of the election results on the website raised concerns that those who would be counting the votes based on the website data might come up with different figures and create confusion.

Henrietta de Villa, chair of the Comelec’s citizens arm Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), said her group and the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas (KBP) would meet to discuss the possibility of conducting a joint tally of the election results.

‘Democratized’ counting

De Villa also said that with the election data made available to the public at once, the holding of parallel counts had been “democratized.”

“Everyone can do the count,” she said in the same Focap forum, adding that the PPCRV itself would be conducting an internal parallel count. With a report from Kristine L. Alave

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MIGRANTS SAY NO TO THE GLOBAL FORUM ON MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT (GFMD)

As representatives of states meet on October 29-30 for the Second Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD), we call on our fellow migrants, migrant advocates and supporters to join the genuine voice of migrants as we say “No to GFMD!”

The GFMD is a device created by First World countries and international financial institutions (IFIs) like the World Bank to corner the remittances, borne by the blood, sweat and tears of migrants, and use it in funding for the “development” of poor countries. It is being used to sell neoliberal anti-poverty financing strategy that relies on the remittances of migrant workers. 

The false notion of “migration for development” that the GFMD peddles further promotes the systematic exploitation of cheap labor. It is meant to capture the remittances of migrants to ensure super profits of bank monopolies and ensure that debt-ridden economies have enough reserves to pay off debts, especially amid the raging financial crisis. The GFMD thrives on the poverty of Third World countries and forces them to institutionalize migration policies. Clearly, the agenda and framework of the GFMD reveals that what is in store is greater commodification of migrant labor, and greater exploitation and miseries of migrant workers.

The GFMD holds more significance this year because it is being hosted by the Arroyo regime in the Philippines. The Arroyo regime is the nightmare ofoverseas Filipino workers (OFWs). No other regime has bled the OFWs dry with enormous exactions from fees to charges to taxes. It has duped OFWs to part with their earnings in collusion with big business, illegal recruiters, traffickers and racketeers, and in utter disregard of the abuses and violations of migrants’ rights. It is currently riding high on the phenomenal increase in dollar remittances even as OFWs continue to reel from the falling value of their dollars.

It is time to expose that the GFMD is a predatory scheme that does not address the root causes of underdevelopment and the massive migration of poor people, much less consider the harsh conditions and legitimate issues of migrant workers. The GFMD does not promote the development of poor countries but pushes them deeper into the quagmire of poverty. 

The GFMD is a sham assembly that talks about migrants but deliberately excludes the migrants themselves. It talks about the protection of migrants but in reality violates our rights. First World countries, IFIs, banks, businesses, and governments of poor countries– which have profited immensely and unscrupulously from our hard labor– are the same institutions that are behind the GFMD. After years of neglect, abuse and exploitation, it is time that the genuine voice of the migrants be heard: No to GFMD! No to labor export policy! No to forced migration! Create jobs at home! End poverty! Defend and advance our rights!

 

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ROLLBACKS NOT ENOUGH: DIESEL OVERPRICED BY P6.45 PER LITER FROM JAN-SEPT 2008

The series of oil price rollbacks on diesel implemented by oil companies this month are not enough because diesel prices are overpriced by a total of P6.45 per liter from January to September this year, according to research group IBON Foundation.

This estimate was the cumulative overpricing over the January to September period, computed based on the monthly movement of Dubai crude, diesel and pump prices, and the foreign exchange (forex) rate.

According to IBON research head Sonny Africa, the worst overpricing happened in June to August when oil firms used record Dubai prices to increase pump prices, and then rollback pump prices to less than what is justified. Overpricing in those three months amounted to a total of P13.50. Although there was underpricing recorded in some months since January, the price of diesel was still overpriced over the nine-month period.

Africa noted that this pattern has continued since the start of deregulation where diesel pump prices increased 1.7 times faster than Dubai crude prices in peso terms. The cumulative overpricing only shows that big oil firms use their monopoly over pricing to dictate pump prices that are beyond what can be justified by global crude oil price movements.

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GLOBALIZATION, PROFITEERING, LACK OF GENUINE AGRARIAN REFORM BEHIND WORSENING FOOD CRISIS

Civil society groups call October 16 ‘World Foodless Day’

As the world celebrates World Food Day today, research group IBON join civil society groups worldwide in denouncing globalization polices and corporate profiteering, which have made food a commodity for trade and speculation that worsened global hunger.

Global food prices have risen by 75% since 2000, according to the World Bank, while prices of rice, corn, wheat, and soybean have hit all-time highs. Prices of meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products naturally follow the upward trends of grains prices. Amid the global financial crisis, increased speculation in food and fuel prices is seen as a possible consequence that will further push food prices up and worsen the poor’s access to food.

The world is facing its worst food crisis that has been aggravated by trade liberalization policies imposed by international finance institutions (IFIs) like the International Monetary Fund and trade bodies such as the World Trade Organization. These policies have allowed intensified profiteering by food transnational corporations (TNCs). In fact while more and more people go hungry everyday, TNCs such as Cargill and grain traders such as Archer Daniels Midland reported increased profits as of the first quarter of 2008.

TNCs in its desire for more profits have continued to lobby IFIs and Third World government to implement globalization policies in food and agriculture, including liberalization of trade and investment in agriculture, privatization of public organs in agricultural extension services such as irrigation, trading and the like, and deregulation of government roles in pricing, marketing and even land reforms. These globalization policies compound the deep crisis of agriculture and food production in underdeveloped countries due to decades-old landlessness of farmers, backwardness of their tools and production, monopoly of land, tools and inputs, TNC control in production and trade, and government neglect. Thus, ironically, hunger is at its worst in rural communities in the Third World where most food and agricultural production take place.

Globalization has not only resulted in the increasing bankruptcy and worsening poverty and hunger of farmers and consumers, but also in continuously eroding local production and self-sufficiency of Third World countries.

Civil society, peasant groups, and people’s organizations around the world consider World Food Day an opportune time to send a strong message that farmers and people of the Third World reject globalization, trade liberalization, and TNC profiteering of agriculture. It is also a time to recognize the successful efforts of broad alliances of farmers and people’s organizations for strengthened protests against globalization, struggle against genuine agrarian reform, and relentlessly demand for social accountability. (end)

World Foodless Day events are being held in more than fourteen countries across Asia and being supported by civil society groups around the globe. For more details on the events of World Foodless Day, visit http://www.panap.net/wfd

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