Category — Philippine Elections

Reacting to news reports that Smartmatic-TIM has actually discovered the existence of “ghost” precincts after their survey of polling areas, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) through its spokesperson James Jiminez belied the allegations.

“It was a regular report and it was misinterpreted as ghost precincts because of findings that supposedly so and so number was not found by the team. It’s as simple as that. The report itself does not make any claim that there are missing precincts.”

ABC-CBN/Newsbreak reported that there exist “ghost” precincts in Metro Manila and other parts of the Philippines citing their source as Smartmatic-TIM.  The report says that there are 57 polling voting centers that surveyors failed to find.

Smartmatic-TIM surveyors said it had already submitted to Comelec the list and report of missing precincts for proper action.

It was once perceived as the strongest and toughest threat to all political parties as the midnight romance of the biggest administration party’s political allies coalesced in a hurry.  They boasted of unparallel cohesion, political and financial machinery and of course winning the presidential derby with Gilbert “Gibo” Teodoro as their standard-bearer.

But as quick as it merged, is also its quick disintegration with cracks becoming more and more visible to the public eye.

Where has all the political money has gone?  Where is the massive political war chest?  All these claims of the Lakas-Kampi-CMD have become weightless as helium and a war chest only full of dusts and mites.

And defections of even their strongest allies and political patrons to join Villar’s bandwagon are only confirming the propagandists’ campaign of a “Villaroyo”.

Gibo Teodoro is left out in the cold and seemingly has been destined to lose the race as soon as he was chosen as the standard-bearer, as the highest leaders of Lakas-Kampi-CMD particularly the Arroyo couple are rooting for another candidate.

As they say, if there is a will, there is way; and not even the most cunning of Lakas-Kampi’s political operators shows any zeal and jest of making Gibo win a very tough race and the only best way for individual political survival is to jump ship and leave their comrade fighting a personal political battle.

Poor Gibo Teodoro; waging a political campaign of Walang-LAKAS, Walang-KaKAMPI.

Gibo said it right when interviewed about the defections, that politicians who do not have a word of honor reveals their bad character, and politicians with bad character should never be voted into public positions.

Maybe, if Gibo runs as an independent, leaves his non-sense political party and wags off the venom of the Arroyo administration anointed on his head, he may easily become one of best choice between Aquino and Villar who had epitomized the art of political mudslinging and black propaganda on their quest for the top spot.

What is your thought on how the political campaign of Gibo Teodoro is running with all the defections and perceived lack of support to his candidacy of his party?

Ang Ladlad can now join the May 2010 elections as a legitimate party-list group according to the ruling of the Supreme Court with the decision penned by SC Associate Justice Mariano del Castillo.

The group that represents the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered) communities in the country sought the Supreme Court’s ruling when the COMELEC barred them from joining the election with a very controversial resolution founded on faith-based arguments.

The SC ruling on Ang Ladlad says,

“We are not blind to the fact that, through the years, homosexual conduct, and perhaps homosexuals themselves, have borne the brunt of societal disapproval. It is not difficult to imagine the reasons behind this censure – religious beliefs, convictions about the preservation of marriage, family, and procreation, even dislike or distrust of homosexuals themselves and their perceived lifestyle. Nonetheless, we recall that the Philippines has not seen fit to criminalize homosexual conduct”

Ang Ladlad was even accused as immoral who cannot do any good to this nation and short of bluntly called criminals by bishops of the CBCP and the Comelec Commissioners of the Second Division.

At least this one decision that we can say that the Supreme Court is reasonable after it ruled on giving Gloria Arroyo the right to appoint on the Supreme Court despite the ban with their arguments weighing like “helium”.

Manny Villar is a big fat presidential liar.

By now, many of us had already memorized some of his campaign jingles though we despise them; only by the sheer fact that we cannot escape the constant bombardment of these songs like the combined Allied Forces trying to recapture the Pacific from the Japanese Imperial Army, that we lay dead and permissive.

But the truth has now come up; the gold had shine from the rock.  The truth about the death of his younger brother Danny that he is using on his political advertisements no lay wide open.

The truth about the death of Danny that Manny Villar lied to us in a nutshell:

William Esposo wrote a comprehensive article about this one; the uncovering of the ugly truth infested with maggots inside the billions of pesos that Manny Villar is pouring on TV and radio advertisements.

Villar says: “Nakaranas na ba kayong … mamatayan ng kapatid dahil wala kang pera pangpagamot (Have you experienced losing a brother because you did not have the money to provide him proper medical care)?

But the truth is that Danny Villar died of leukemia at the FEU Hospital in 1962 for which he was confined for 13 days and people with such kind of disease will really succumb to death during that period as there were not many medical remedies for that disease available.  FEU was one of the top hospitals that time.  Danny’s remains were then turned over to Funeraria Paz, an obviously expensive mortuary.

Villar’s family owned a property on San Rafael Village, a middle-class area that will tell us that his family should have a sizeable income in order to buy such a property; a far cry to what he is saying.  And by the way, Manny Villar studied on private schools.

My thoughts:

• Villar is a big liar really and we have known this from the start, that not even his billions can hide the stench of his lies.  While he was assailing Noynoy Aquino to be just riding on the “legacy” of his parents Ninoy and Cory, Villar on the other hand capitalized and we may even say disrespectfully used the sad state and misery of his brother Danny to further his personal ambitions.  Here we see the stark difference between the Noynoy and Manny; the light from the shadow.

• Villar must have been hallucinating to say “Nakaranas na ba kayong … mamatayan ng kapatid dahil wala kang pera pangpagamot (Have you experienced losing a brother because you did not have the money to provide him proper medical care)? and think that this will sway the Filipinos to his side and won for him a seat in the Palace.  Why?  Because this is not and is never a Filipino trait; to let your love ones die in your arms without doing anything.  Most Filipinos even try to commit the nastiest of crimes just for the sake of the welfare of their families.  Villar undermines then the capacity of the Filipino intellect by trying to paint and sway an atmosphere of empathy for him while forgetting that “helplessness” and doing nothing for one’s family more so is never a character of the Filipino people.

• If Villar can utilize the misery and sad fate of his brother Danny and paint lies just for the sake of political ambitions, how much more can he do towards the Filipino nation?  With the family as the fortress of our character and the source of existence, at least for the Filipino society, how can a man use the sad death of his brother for his political ambition?  And how much can he do to further his clout to power towards total strangers leaves a great room for one’s imagination.

• While Gloria Arroyo is always all out to protect her kin and always further their welfare to the expense of the nation, Manny Villar does have the guts to use his family for his personal goals and political survival on a highly-contested presidential race.  Let me leave that for you to ponder on.

• In the spirit of Lent, I remembered that not all that calls God are true believers and followers of God.  And so, not all those who say they are poor really came from poverty and had experienced poverty.

What can you say about this article on Manny Villar faking his political advertisement regarding the death of his brother Danny and using it for his political campaign?

Image from Citadel

What is really a marginalized sector?

This is the very issue that the poll office and many different camps are asking as the Party-list System in the Philippines is callously and vividly bastardized by the very same traditional politicians who had already been seen with contempt by the voting public.

Unfortunately, with the admission of the Commission on Elections that there does not exists a well-defined article in the law about party-list system of who is and what really is a marginalized sector, this has opened the floodgates for opportunists, traditional politicians and recycled politicos who wants to perpetuate in power and find more chances to fatten their checkbooks.

Are the hundreds of party-list groups written on the ballots really representing any marginalized sector?

This is the only country that everyone, everything and all groups could now easily become a marginalized sector and have a representation in Congress.

Imagine. How can Buhay Partylist be a marginalized sector when it is obviously the political arm of El Shaddai; and Mike Velarde is one of their nominees?

How can a group that says they are pushing for children’s rights run ads on giant TV networks (they are running the same ad Manny Villar used) that costs millions of pesos be a marginalized sector?  And this leads us also to connect the dots that political camps and candidates are also seen to be using the partylist system and groups to circumvent the law and further their political agenda and clout to power and government control.

Not only that everyone now can easily become a marginalized sector, but also the very flawed and abused system of nomination is already one big reason for people to cry foul and ask for a total review and amendment of this particular bill on party-list system.

Imagine.  The incompetent Angelo Reyes is nominated; same with Mikey Arroyo who had never experienced of fully understand the plight of security guards; the doctor to the stars Dr. Manny Calayan; the military officers who were implicated on the election fraud scandal “Hello Garci” are also nominated; cabinet secretaries of Gloria Arroyo are nominated; and many more for sure to be revealed in the coming days.

And all these party-list groups, hundreds of them are all racing on top of the ballot by starting with number 1 or some crazy letter abbreviations starting with the letter A to be easily voted; and most nominees were only picked from somewhere which had not actually been members of the group to have a full understanding of their plight and situation.

This makes me ponder:  How about Pinoy bloggers filing for party-list accreditation?  That will only happen if bloggers had already succumb to political greed and financial ambitions.

Crazy idea, but with crazy people working around to circumvent the law by bastardizing the party-list system, no wonder that some got so easily be infected.

What is your thought of our present partylist system?  Any party-list group that you can identify to still be truly representing the marginalized sector of the Philippine society?

A mistweet message of Noynoy Aquino circulated the internet Tuesday as people thought his Twitter account was also hacked, following the hacking of Manny Villar’s website.

The Noynoy Aquino mistweet message posted 10:28 AM reads:

“Won’t be bringing a car to work na everyday! Stupid taxi who bumped my car! 5k down the drain!”

The suspicious tweet message was later clarified by Ms. Leah Navarro, one of the personnel of Noynoy’s media bureau saying that the presidential contender usually asks his staff to tweet messages that he wants to share to the public.  Unfortunately, a personal rant of one of Aquino’s staff tweeted his issue on the senator’s official Twitter account at @noynoyaquino.

Image from Yahoo.com.ph

The latest on the brewing rivalry between top presidential contenders Manny Villar and Noynoy Aquino III is Manny Villar’s website hacked and redirected some portion of the Nacionalista bet’s traffic and visitors to that of Aquino’s website.

Villar hacked website has an entry dated March 19 claiming to be Kris Aquino and posted this message and asked website visitors to instead vote for Aquino.

“Omigosh kalerky to the max. Imagine, may I gamit pa mga kids sa commercial to make sipsip to the poor. Pano naman kaming mga richhh!”

Reacting to the said hacking of a certain Kris Aquino on Villar’s website, Nacionalista Party said through its spokesman,

“We are extremely disturbed by the hacking of Sen. Manny Villar’s website by persons unknown.

“Underground elements seem to persist, and a cyberwar is being waged against us–what with the flurry of black propaganda texts and ‘mansion hoax’ e-mails to spoofing our identity on social networks…clearly, this hacking attempt was meant to negatively impact on our campaign’s goodwill.”

In fairness, the hacker knows really how to imitate Krissy…LOL!

What do you think of this hacking on Villar’s website by someone posing to be Kris Aquino?