Not just to watch passively but active as citizens journalists

Comelec, a no show in Pampanga citizens journalism training.

Bishop Pablo Virgilio “Ambo” David underscored the importance of being armed with correct information as the nation goes to the polls on May 10 to select their next set of national and local leaders in a seminar-workshop on citizen journalism held at the Holy Angel University in Angeles City.

Bishop Ambo said, “Truth will set us free but first, truth will make us miserable.” .

One of those “miserable” truths is that patronage politics still dominates in elections. Inquirer correspondent Tonette Orejas’ presentation of the personalities that dominate Pampanga said it best: the unelected president Gloria Arroyo, Sen. Lito Lapid, Lilia Pineda, who was recently declared by the Comelec as winner of the 2007 gubernatorial race nullifying the “miracle” victory of Fr. Ed Panlilio.

Panlilio has brought the issue to the Supreme Court.

Pineda is the wife of Rodolfo “Bong” Pineda referred to in reports as the powerful jueteng lord, who has successfully financed national election campaigns of a number of politicians. Pineda was identified by Michaelangelo Zuce, a member of the staff and nephew of former Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano as the one who distributed cash to Mindanao-based Comelec officials in a meeting at the Arroyo residence in Las Vista four months before the fraud-tainted 2004 elections.

The March 13 and 20 seminar attended by students and members of civil society groups is organized by the Holy Rosary parish in collaboration with Holy Angel University and VERA Files. The objective is to enhance the participants research and reporting skills as they do citizen journalism to help people get out of patronage politics and use their votes for principled politics.

Tonette said citizen journalism (the concept of members of the public playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating information which traditionally is the job of professional journalists) will be put into good use in their project, “Boto Mo, Kinabukasan Mo! Eleksyon 2010 sa CCTV36” to be launched on March 19.

Citizen journalism is the core of VERA Files’ “ VOTE 2010” project, which is the monitoring of the 2010 election in partnership with civil society organization all over the country.

The organizers invited a Comelec representative as many are still not so clear about what to do when they go to the polls in the first automated national elections in May. This is reflected in a Pulse Asia survey that public awareness of the country’s first nationwide automated elections remains low with up to 61% of voters saying they have little to no knowledge about the new system.

Sadly, the Comelec representative didn’t come.

Maybe Comelec officials are too busy. Maybe Comelec is undermanned they could not comply with the many requests to participate in civil society groups election training programs.

I’m concerned about the Comelec not being able to cope with requests for representatives in voters education activities because it underscores it’s inadequacy in conducting an event that could either save or further damage our democracy.
One of the issues raised (which was left unanswered) last Saturday was about the suspicious marking in the Comelec’s official ballot which actually is the candidate’s party affiliation if magnified.

This concern was also raised by Joril in my blog. Joril, who introduced himself as a computer programmer downloaded a copy of the official ballot and he noticed that the underscoring has a pattern:1) Name of Lakas candidate was completely underlined – a long underscore;2) LP and Independent candidate begins with a single underscore;3) NPC, PMP and NP candidate begins with a double underscore.

He said, “To a computer programmer’s eye, these underscores represent a digital party ID of each candidate, very similar to a product barcode, which the PCOS can interpret: long underscore equals one, single underscore equals two, double underscore equals three, so on and so forth.”

He also said,” In scanning a voter’s ballot, the only information that the PCOS looks for is the status of the oval marker at the left of each candidate’s name, whether it is marked off or not, since static data such as precinct number and BEI codes are taken up during the setup process. By reading this oval status, the PCOS can collect complete information as to the number of voters as well as valid/invalid votes cast in its assigned clustered precincts. Being a legal document, any unwanted digital marks on the ballot which the PCOS can potentially see is illegal and subject to questions that the Comelec must answer.”

He raised a concern: “And what’s alarming is that a cryptic computer instruction can easily use this ‘barcode info’” to juggle election results during transmission time, ending up as a big-time automated dagdag-bawas!

Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal in a TV interview said there’s nothing to fear about the barcodes because they are just “security features.”

I believe that the Comelec is doing all they can do within the resources available to them to make the May elections honest and credible. The lack of “resources available” is what is giving me the creeps.