Hayden Kho’s lawyer says the old Hayden is dead. Wow. Talk about a Jeckle and Hyde case. In just a span of a few weeks, Hayden has turned, according to Atty. Lorna Kapunan, from a self-confessed sex maniac to a “reformed one”. Why? To avoid prosecution? Or, maybe, an attempt to placate public anger over his controversial sex tapes, especially that Careless Whisper version? This is obviously a PR hack job. Is it working? I doubt it. You don’t change the color of a horse’s mane overnight.

Same thing with elections. Constitutionalist and former COMELEC chairman Christian Monsod urged the public not to lose confidence with manual counting in elections. He says that the 1992 and 1998 elections were relatively “clean”; therefore, nothing to fear or nothing to get anxious about.

I have the highest respect for Atty. Monsod but to say that these elections were clean, well, he’s telling us a half-truth. Same way as COMELEC chairman Jose Melo saying that the Commission can enter into a scheme with Smartmatic, using the DFA-Stratdec computerization project as an example. Melo just lied. There was no such scheme. And you can’t give sovereign guaranty to a private company. It’s prohibited.

Atty. Monsod came out from the woodwork and urge us to be calm. Let’s give manual counting a chance. Remember 1992 and 1998? Those were clean ones, says Monsod. Maybe Mr. Monsod is reading a different history book. Or, like Gloria, he’s trying to paint a Rembrandt out of thin air. Or creating sand castles out of ant hills. This is simply just Bencardism.

That year, 1992, was marred with election irregularities and fraud perpetuated by no less than DILG secretary Ronnie Puno, if we are to believe Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago. Remember Santiago’s outrage when she told a stunned audience that COCs were changed in favor of former president Fidel V. Ramos. That year started the “dagdag bawas” vote shaving scheme, remember Mr. Monsod?

Also, in 1998, reports show how certain senatorial candidates got the scare of their lives when their votes were shaved by election operators. Remember those protests from senatorial candidates? That was in 1998.

These cheating cases that started in 1992 and 1998 were the reasons why we demanded automation in the first place.

I understand why the palace unleashed the likes of Mr. Monsod. Don’t forget that Mr. Monsod is still a Gloria ally. Like his wife, he never really distanced himself from Gloria. So, Mr. Monsod is a polluted source (sorry po, prof., but I have to write the truth).

There’s no denying that many people are laughing themselves all the way to the bank with the failure of the poll automation bidding. Manual counting means big, big money for COMELEC operators. And these operators became brazen when the dagdag bawas scheme reared its ugly head in 1992. It became worse in 2004 and in 2007.

So, whenever certain people say, that the likes of Hayden Khos are on the way to reform, or that our elections had certain periods of calm and orderliness, think. That’s obviously a PR hack job.

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