Kopi Talk - Who's responsible?

Hi Philstar thanks for the article, I guess is like cooking a clay pot rice with all the ingredient preparation before hand. Every endeavor begin with a goal to make a good clay pot rice. With that goal in mind we developed some expectation as we unlikely to know if the clay pot rice we cook is good or bad or even the right taste. What taste good in Singapore might not necessary have the right taste for the local Philippine restaurant. So we adapted and learn even included some of the local spices ingredient for the recipe. Sometimes they turn out to be correct and sometime they do not. In these case we always hold on the expectation that we will make a great clay pot rice if we follow the old recipe by making some allowance and variation to accommodate the particular taste. Although the ingredient are different and some of the steps involved are different but certainly many thing are the same. Is in the adaption process that learning occur by gathering all the information that support even conflicting opinion and finally making a decision based on the information collected. I guess the rest is history.

Posted by Philstar
Three entities are directly involved in preparations for the country’s first fully automated elections. The main entity is the Commission on Elections. Another is the private consortium of Smartmatic-Total Information Management, which is providing the precinct count optical scan machines and software, and which provided specifications for the design of the ballots. Both the PCOS machines and ballots are supposed to be precinct-specific. The third is the agency that produced the ballots, the National Printing Office.

An early glitch in the preparations was the smudging of ultraviolet security markings in the ballots. Comelec and Smartmatic officials explained that the sheer volume of ballots caused the smudging during printing. The glitch prompted Smartmatic-TIM to disable the UV scanning function in the PCOS machines. This not only compromises the integrity of the vote but will also cost about P28 million for the purchase of portable UV scanners. Should Juan de la Cruz shoulder this added expense?

On Monday night the PCOS machines failed their first major test in several areas, unable to read or accurately record data in the ballots. The malfunctions prompted a massive recall of flash cards — those tiny devices where data processed from filled out ballots will be stored in the PCOS machines. The recall of the memory cards for “reconfiguration” involves 76,000 machines. Who’s keeping track of those flash cards and their reconfiguration? The reconfiguration and new testing will have to be completed at least two days before election day.

Poll officials and legal observers have pointed out that there is no provision in the law providing for a postponement of the elections, whose date is set under the Constitution. There is only a provision for a failure of elections — a scenario that the President’s national security adviser, now recycled as defense chief, has been warning about long before the start of the official campaign period. But the country is as ill-prepared for a failure of elections as the Comelec seems to be for full poll automation. And the prospect of the President serving in a holdover capacity after noon of June 30 has to be the worst scenario of all.

How did the country get into this mess? The other day there was an argument at the Comelec over who should be hanged first: those responsible for this chaos, or those responsible for soaring power costs. In other countries, honorable individuals would have resigned or even committed hara-kiri over something like this. Someone must pay for this mess, and it shouldn’t be Juan de la Cruz.