Tag: COMELEC

Teddy Locsin shouldn’t have called “vice president” Leni Robredo “BOBA”

To be fair, one would expect a bit more of Department of Foreign Affairs Secretary Teddy Locsin. He is, after all, a seasoned public servant and an articulate newspaper columnist. For a man of his skills and experience, one would think he’d find far more eloquent and more uppity ways to point out just how stupid Leni Robredo is.

Locsin could have, instead, described Robredo as a daft ineffectual government executive who is occupying expensive taxpayer-funded space and taking oxygen from the atmosphere without giving back proportionate useful value to people who could’ve put that important gas to more productive use.

If I were Robredo, I wouldn’t attract too much attention to myself considering her claim to the Office of the Vice President remains debatable to this day. She is but a mere beneficiary of the influence wielded by her party over the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) back in 2016 after it failed to comply with an important election guideline that would have resulted in her disqualification from the elections. More importantly her “win” in that election currently remains in dispute owing to allegations of electoral fraud.

Leni Robredo blew what could have been a great working relationship with President Duterte.

The most important point of all is that Robredo had long ago epically blown her bid to be a respected member of the Cabinet of President Rodrigo Duterte. This is thanks to her inability to recognise that she is “vice president” of all Filipinos and not just of the Yellowtards. Big lesson there, but unfortunately one Robredo failed to take heed of.

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Otso Diretso and the Communists: TALO sa #Halalan2019

With more than 90 percent of votes transmitted, adminstration and independent candidates dominate the top 12 slots up for grabs. The only blight on the list is Bong Revilla who was, until now, detained on charges of corruption.

What is left for the Yellowtard-led Opposition to do? Why cry bloody “electoral fraud” of course.

We all know the drill.

The trouble with that option is that the unofficial results so far are consistent with numerous surveys conducted by independent firms led by Social Weather Stations (SWS) and Pulse Asia. The only thing the Yellowtards can count on is the dismal credibility of the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) — the single common denominator underlying electoral fraud over the last several decades.

But the Yellowtards had essentially shot themselves in the foot back in 2016 when they aggressively dismissed charges of cheating back then when their lackey, the disgraced Andy Bautista, ruled over the COMELEC as its chairman.

Tough shit is pretty much the only thing one could say about the plight of the Yellowtards, the broader Opposition and the communists at the fringes who piggyback on the quaint demonisation campaign they have been mounting against the administration of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.

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The COMELEC is NO LONGER a credible and TRUSTED governor of Philippine elections!

The Philippines’ Commission on Elections (COMELEC) has been caught out many times turning a blind eye to electoral fraud, tolerating crooked technology suppliers, and bending its own rules to favour specific candidates and/or their parties.

Firstly, the COMELEC has a long track record of presiding over fraudulent elections. This is evident in the many incidents that mark electoral history in the Philippines over the last several decades with big appalling blatant cheating reported not just in 2016 but also in 2004 and 2010.

Second, somebody in the COMELEC seems to be protecting SMARTMATIC, what is widely regarded as a crooked technology supplier.

The problem is, since members of the Supreme Court are considered luddites or among those who fear technology, they are slow to act on any petition that challenges the legitimacy of the election results. They did order the Comelec to compel Smartmatic TIM to make public the source codes used to run and operate the equipment. They simply refused and that was that.

Even a Senate investigation last year of how Smartmatic TIM conducted the 2010 elections, failed to provide clear answers as the company evaded questions on how the PCOS machines work. It is obvious they could get away with it because the Senators are hopelessly inept at making sense of the technical jargon.

Allegations of election fraud in 2010 fell on deaf ears. They were immediately dismissed as sour grapping even when more than one whistleblower came to speak out.

Third and last, when push comes to shove, the COMELEC will excuse its preferred candidates when they are in breach of its own guidelines as what happened in 2016 when it allowed vice presidential candidate Leni Robredo to be declared winner of those elections despite her party failing to comply with COMELEC requirements surrounding submission deadlines of candidates’ Statements of Contributions and Expenditures (SOCEs).

Roxas and the LP had, last Wednesday, the 8th of June, reportedly requested an extension of the deadline citing “voluminous number of receipts that have to be scanned and attached” as their excuse.

But…

Section 2 of Rule 10 issued by the COMELEC applicable for these 2016 elections states that there is absolutely no provision to allow an extension of the 8th of June deadline for filing the SOCE for any reason whatsoever…

Leni Robredo is, by all intents and purposes, disqualified from taking her post as vice president. Thanks to a cooperative COMELEC, however, she now occupies the post and is regarded by her supporters as the Philippines’ “vice president”.

Really, Filipinos need to re-evaluate the role the COMELEC plays in dishonest elections. For their sake and the sake of their fragile “democracy”.

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Will the COMELEC “gun ban” effective Jan 13 make the 2019 elections safer?

The New Year opens the runway towards the Philippines’ 2019 mid-term elections. As campaign activity ramps up and politicking intensifies between parties vying for power and making a bid to cash in on all the spending associated with elections, the risk of violence supposedly also increases. Following tradition, bearing of firearms will be curtailed in the lead up to that crucial event.

The Daily Gauardian reports that the ban will be effective the 13th January through to the 12th of June this year, and…

During said period, bearing, carrying or transporting of firearms, explosives or other deadly weapons are prohibited.

Deliveries of firearms, ammunition, and explosives without proper certifications are also disallowed.

Chief Superintendent John Bulalacao, Western Visayas police chief, said qualified individuals can seek exemption by applying for the appropriate certificate of authority from the Comelec.

The application must be filed with the Comelec’s Committee on Ban on Firearms and Security Personnel (CBSFP) at the poll body’s main office in Intramuros, Manila until May 29, 2019.

The big assumptions there are, well, pretty big:

(1) limiting access to firearms will reduce the risk of violence;

(2) issuance of a “Certificate of Authority” to exempt certain people from the ban will be transparent and fair; and,

(3) such a ban is actually enforceable.

The question in the context of the above untested assumptions is: Does the Philippines’ gun ban even make sense to begin with?

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Will the #BabaeAko feminist “movement” support Gretchen Fullido?

Nobody seems to be holding their breath waiting for the Philippines’ monopoly feminist “movement” #BabaeAko to raise a stink over embattled ABS-CBN News anchor Gretchen Fullido. Fullido recently filed sexual harassment charges against several ABS-CBN execs in a move that rocked a bastion of Opposition media propaganda.

The trouble with the community of #BabaeAko “activists” is that most if not everyone of them is associated with the Yellowtard community who are, at the moment, the self-appointed “leaders” of the Philippine Opposition. Thus these so-called feminists are caught between a rock and a hard place.

This echoes past incidences of selective “activism” amongst Filipino “feminists” such as the time the wife of fugitive COMELEC chairman Andy Bautista came under fire from Yellowtards seeking to discredit her statements hinting at her husband’s trove of unexplained wealth. Suffice to say, no #BabaeAko “feminist” came to her defense.

So much for genuine activism in the Philippines. Because, in the Philippines, everything is partisan in nature.

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Is Leni Robredo REALLY the “vice president” of the Philippines??

The answer to this important question has been debatable since 2016 when Robredo managed to claw her way up to the Office of the Vice President. Thanks to what, at the time, was a cooperative Commision on Elections (COMELEC), Robredo was granted an exemption from being subject to a rule that barred winning candidates who are members of political parties that failed to submit a Statement of Contributions and Expenditures (SOCE) from taking office.

The Liberal Party under the banner of which Robredo ran for office failed to comply to that rule. Nonetheless, Robredo was allowed to take office. It should be noted that then COMELEC chair Andy Bautista was “senatorial campaign advisor” of Mar Roxas who was Robredo’s running mate during the 2016 elections according to a tweet issued by Teddy Locsin in 2015.

Bautista seemingly fled the country after reports of electoral fraud marring the 2016 elections emerged. These reports are now the subject of an investigation being conducted by a Supreme Court tribunal which further brings to question the legitimacy of Robredo’s “vice presidency”.

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