This article was published in Manila Times, 3 June 2010.

BY RICARDO BAHAGUE JR.

Coming from a history of election fraud and violence, it should have been no surprise that the same old problems were reported during the elections a month ago.

Even the speed at which the Comelec started proclaiming national candidates fell short of the target that the Comelec-Smartmatic automated election system (AES) evangelists promised. Traditional forms of fraud such as vote-buying, harassment and ballot snatching (and pre-shading) remained amid the lack of trust in the AES itself due to Comelec’s own doing: it out-sourced and privatized its constitutional function to a foreign company. Comelec trusted Smartmatic hook, line and sinker as it let security features be removed one by one while playing a deaf ear to calls for them to address vulnerabilities that various groups have raised.