http://www.gmanews.tv/story/150635/Poll-lawyer-wants-Comelec-chief-commissioners-to-resign
Atty. Romulo Macalintal is no ordinary lawyer.
He belongs to a select sub segment of the profession that specialize on electoral law in this election crazy country.
But more than that, Macalintal’s top client is President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
So when Atty. ‘Mac’ has a complaint about a case people tent to listen.
But when the good lawyer stakes his profession and dares the chairman of the constitutional elections body to resign, it is something to take a serious look at.
It turns out one of Atty. Mac’s other clients recently lost an election protest before the COMELEC and he’s aghast over what he claims is rank incompetence in the poll body.
Chairman Melo surely has some explaning to do since Macalintal’s claims, if correct, could open up a can of worms about the quality of work at the poll body.
But Atty. Macalintal also better be absolutely sure that he is on the right side of this argument given that people cannot but feel that his tantrum maybe have something to do with his ‘influential’ closeness to GMA.
It also must resonate that this is not just a personal matter to him but is part of a larger advocacy to help the COMELEC do a better job with the 2010 pollsa just 14 months away.
The debate now over the automation of the polls is not in center frame with the COMELEC again being given billions to buy and set up a system.
Unresolved is that Megapacific deal where the IT provider was found to have been an overnight start-u.
The SCORP had ordered the COMELEC to recover the monies paid out in the deal but nothing has happened.
Chairman Melo has yet to explain what they have done to comply with the SCORP directive.
So with new bidding/s due for the 2010 polls IT infrastructure, the COMELEC cannot afford to have public trust in it eroded , and public opinion against it.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Shakespearean nightmare would be more like it, in one sense.
Or more like a Filipino zarsuela or moro-moro kaya?
Product advertising, another. Or how much would an ordinary acceptance fee be?
Add to that the ‘tongpats’?
Bubukol kaya?
From votes for sale to canvass for “noted” to proclamations for “tong” – what else is new? I don’t know but the ‘hello Garci’ according to official theory is just one of those things concerned candidates normally do – you do, we do, us do – till cheat do us part.
We are tired.
Tired perhaps.
But when I gaze into my two kids’ eyes and realize anew my responsibility to nurture their hopes and dreams, I cannot afford to become cynical or jaded.
If we give up, kp, then its the children we are letting down.
Everyone is within the commerce of Malacanang in the best tradition of BF Skinner’s “The Ideal Society”.
All of us appear to react in the similar way given the same set of stimuli based on this Skinnerian psychoanalytical theory of positive-reinforcement therapy.
Our politicians are like mere specimens in the Malacanang laboratory. The therapists are good at their jobs in relation to patients-politicians.
Disgusting to the nth.
You hit it there.
Inferentially, you are saying they belong to a looney bin.
But they are pulling the levers of power and we are their lab rats :(
Melo is a Kapampangan and GMA is his “kabalen”. Election cheating is normal in the Philippines. My classmate Rene Sarmiento could be just a deodorant in the stinking Comelec. :)
“Election cheating is normal in the Philippines.”
Sad but seemingly true. The is exactly the reason the Garcis of this topsy-turvy world thrive, jcc.
History’s judgment will come for the cheaters, sooner rather than later.They should pray for it not be as harsh as the suffering they’ve inflicted on the people.
If Rene Sarmiento were a deodorant to COMELEC, perhaps Enrile, Pimentel and Santiago were to Senate, older brand.
So apparently Sarmiento can survive the stink?
The point here is to put a workable, fast, and
accurate vote counting capability for the COMELEC.
So that fraud will not happen again.
Some people who wants to cheat try to confuse
the issues.