HOCUS PCOS?

An ?electronic Garci? system or some digital ?hocus PCOS? could have affected the precinct scan optical scan machines in the country?s first automated elections that might have produced manipulated results instead of the true will of the voters, alleged the camp of former President Joseph Estrada.

The ?Hello Garci? scandal refers to the wiretapped telephone conversations between Virgilio Garcillano, then a Comelec (Commission on Elections) commissioner, and President Macapagal-Arroyo about giving her a lead of 1 million votes over the late actor Fernando Poe Jr., her nearest rival, during the 2004 presidential election.

Former Sen. Ernesto Maceda, the campaign manager of Estrada?s Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino (PMP), said the fraud was so widespread, if election results were to be reviewed, even the third placer in the presidential race, Sen. Manuel Villar, would have a chance of coming out on top.

Preprogrammed

Maceda said he received reports of ?agents? approaching candidates before the elections, offering electoral victories in preprogrammed compact flash cards and memory cards in exchange for fees of as much as P30 million.

Lawyer George Garcia, Estrada?s election legal counsel, also said he had clients among the candidates who asked him if they should accept the offer of a preprogrammed victory in exchange for a large sum of money.

Garcia compared the digital manipulation to what happened in the movie ?Man of the Year? which starred Hollywood actor Robin Williams.

In the movie, Williams played a comedian who runs for president, and a computerized voting machine malfunction gets him elected.

?Logistically improbable?

?The purpose of generating a zero-report [at the start of the voting process] is to ensure that there is no vote data inside the machine,? Garcia said.

?The command is different. We are all familiar with the SIM card. The card has a command ? For instance, after five votes counted, you add one vote to this candidate,? he added.

Garcia indicated that the replacement of thousands of compact flash cards after they failed in accuracy tests a week before the elections could have provided the opportunity for the entry of the preprogrammed cards.

He said the quick delivery of reconfigured flash cards one week prior to the elections was logistically improbable.

Signs of preprogramming?

?Were the 76,000 flash cards really returned and reconfigured or were the so-called substitutes already prepared and ready for delivery in the short period of three days?? Garcia said.

?And if there was really nothing irregular going on, why is it that the Comelec did not allow the presence of media and party watchers during the reconfiguration [of the flash cards]?? he added.

Maceda said reports from Manila mayoral candidate Lito Atienza showing election returns that were dated, not May 10, but April 28, May 4 and May 9, pointed to signs of ?preprogramming.?

Maceda also said the random manual counts should be done faster now that reports of discrepancies in election results were beginning to surface.

?The slow pace in the delivery of the results of the random manual counts is highly suspicious. It is almost as if they are hiding something,? he added.

Like child?s play

PMP senatorial candidate Sen. Francisco Tatad said the Comelec could have prevented election fraud if it had retained the security measure that would have allowed voters to verify whether their actual votes had been recorded by the PCOS machines.

He said he was consulting his lawyers on the possibility of filing a ?constitutional action? that would nullify the results of the recent elections. He said he was also preparing an impeachment complaint against the Election commissioners.

?This ?hocus PCOS? makes the Garci scandal look like child?s play,? Tatad said in a news conference at the PMP headquarters in Mandaluyong City.

He questioned the following acts: The disabling of the built-in ultraviolet detection capability of the PCOS that was meant to prevent the use of ballots without the proper UV markings; the disabling of the feature that allowed the voter to see that the machine was reading the vote right; and the Comelec?s general instruction to the boards of election inspectors (BEI) not to digitally sign the data to be transmitted from the PCOS machine.

Don?t destroy flash cards

?The digital signature generated by Smartmatic for the inspectors was, according to the Comelec, already encoded into the machine, effectively putting the function of the digital signature generation, transmission and confirmation into the hands of one entity, Smartmatic, without any independent body to check it,? Tatad said.

Maceda also called on the Comelec to stop destroying the replaced flash cards when the PCOS machines failed in the testing and sealing procedures one week before the elections.

He said the Comelec could be considered ?principal suspects? in electoral fraud if they continued to do so.

Garcia said their camp would have the flash cards examined during the canvassing in Congress.