Election operators

The presentation of signal jammers by the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) during a security meeting held in preparation for next week’s elections may seem worrisome to those concerned about possible tampering and sabotage of operators hired by unscrupulous candidates.

NTC Central Visayas Director Jesus Laureno showed one such device which isn’t bigger than a Wi-Fi router and said it was powerful enough to disrupt signals within a 10- to 20-meter radius.

Not to fear, he said. Voters can help detect signal jammers by turning on their cell phones. “If their cell phones can’t receive calls and text messages even if the signal is strong, then it’s likely there is a signal jammer in one’s area,” Laureno said.

Regional Director Temie Lambino of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) also sought to assure the public by saying that police and military personnel are on standby to arrest the operators and seize the signal jammers.

At worst, he said, it would only delay the transmission of the results since the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines record and store the data internally, he said.

These assurances may be enough to ease whatever surface concerns the voters may have about the automated election process but election operators insist that there are many ways to skin a cat and these gimmicks aren’t lost to many candidates.

Talent manager Annabelle Rama, a neophyte in the world of politics, said she was informed that while the machines are generally tamper-proof, it’s in the delivery of the compact flash cards of the PCOS machines to the board of canvassers where the cheating and manipulation occurs.

Such was the case in Cagayan de Oro, where a bunch of flash cards were found dumped in the city landfill area in the 2010 elections. Three years after, four boxes suspected to contain election paraphernalia were found in the city treasurer’s office, only to be cleared by Comelec.

The results of next week’s elections is crucial owing to its significance as being the springboard for the 2016 elections for the presidency. Local allies know this only too well which is why they give more than their fair share of campaign time to lobby for the candidacies of their sponsors in Manila to their constituents in Cebu.

For Cebuanos however, the bottomline is to protect the sanctity of their vote from the clutches of election operators and manipulators who are only too willing to rig the elections for their employers if the price is right.

As the voting process gets an upgrade, so do the cheating perpetrated by these low-lifes. It’s up to the voting public to stop them in their tracks.