I think what the opposition should do now (especially Cayetano's fellow senatoriables) is to rally behind Alan Cayetano NOW (kahit na hindi pa tapos ang bilangan), hold a presscon, and condemn the COMELEC's disenfranchisement of Alan Cayetano voters. Habang maaga pa. Every Cayetano vote must count for Alan Cayetano, and not for that phony Pidal nuisance candidate Juju "the invisible man" Cayetano.
A recount may be needed. I'm also interested to know how many teachers followed the DEPED memorandum to count the Cayetano votes as stray. We need to get some teachers who did not count the Cayetano or "Alan Cayetano" votes to come out in public. We need to know kung gaano kalaki ang nawalang boto kay Alan Cayetano.
From the PDI Editorial:
Other parts of the anti-Cayetano strategy, however, have been characterized by the same brazenness, the same use of legal form to hide criminal intent.
It took a division of the Abalos Comelec more than a month to disqualify Joselito Cayetano—the man who went by the nickname “Jojo” but listed his nickname in the certificate of candidacy as “Peter”—as a nuisance candidate. He was unknown and unqualified—not because of his poverty but because of his lack of capacity to run a nationwide campaign. Indeed, the fact that he did not give media interviews (the kind of free publicity any serious candidate hungers for) should have been enough reason to see through the nature of his candidacy. That he called himself Peter, obviously to cause his namesake congressman mischief at the polls, should have quickly led to the same conclusion: This Cayetano was not a serious candidate. That it took the Comelec en banc another six weeks to confirm the division’s finding shows that the deliberate delay was really part of the strategy. The decision came out on May 11, the last Friday before elections.
Deliberate confusion was another key part of that strategy. The day after the May 11 decision, the Abalos Comelec issued a reminder that the disqualification of Joselito Cayetano was not yet final—and that therefore he remained a candidate. On election day itself, the Department of Education issued a memorandum, signed by Undersecretary Franklin Sunga, directing teachers not to include “Cayetano-only” votes in the count: “if only the word Cayetano is written on the ballot, the vote shall be considered stray.”
We cannot remember any other instance when the DepEd, the government’s largest single agency, ever issued a memorandum essentially protecting a nuisance candidate. The long arm of Malacañang is long indeed.
UPDATE: Now this is just sick.
Election inspectors in Obando, Bulacan, voided votes for “Alan Cayetano” after an election supervisor went around the precincts in the town telling the Boards of Election Inspectors that it was he—not Joselito Pepito Cayetano—who had been disqualified.
It was Joselito Cayetano, a senatorial candidate of the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan, who was disqualified by the Commission on Elections on May 11 for being a “nuisance.” But the decision was not yet final.
Closer to the Comelec’s central office in Manila, BEIs in the city’s sixth district also shunned the votes for Alan Cayetano, a senatorial candidate of the Genuine Opposition, because of guidance from certain Comelec officials in the area.
If our election officials are untrustworthy, WHO CAN YOU TRUST?
And automating our election systems won't really help much. It'll only make it more easier to cheat. Kumbaga, you won't even know it.
Sabi nga ng isang DIEBOLD spokesperson (sila yung gumagawa ng mga voting machines, back in May 12, 2006:
David Bear, a spokesman for Diebold Election Systems, said the potential risk existed because the company’s technicians had intentionally built the machines in such a way that election officials would be able to update their systems in years ahead.
“For there to be a problem here, you’re basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software,” he said. “I don’t believe these evil elections people exist.”
The admin gets the last laugh. Unless we can do the following:
2) A Zero Tolerance Approach to Cheating. It's a two-step process. First, reform the COMELEC and do a thorough housecleaning within the Election commission of all those involved in the dagdag bawas operations of 2004, and those who helped lie and coverup for those guilty COMELEC officials. Second, automate our voting system. But we need to do the COMELEC housecleaning first.
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