‘MR. CHAIRMAN, LET’S OPEN NOT JUST ONE BOX BUT ALL PCOS MACHINES WHICH DID NOT TRANSMIT

An Open Letter To Chairman Sixto Brillantes

Dear Chairman Sixto Brillantes,

I would like to thank you for your openness in ensuring that the conduct of the 2013 Elections would be as credible as everyone hopes it would be.

Your challenge to “Pick a box and let’s open it” is the key which will literally open up boxes of questions which the people would like to be answered.

I am taking up your challenge, Mr. Chairman, with a slight modification: Let us not just open one ballot box but all of the ballot boxes in the precincts whose PCOS machines failed to transmit on election day.

If the intention of your challenge is to really ferret out the truth and not just an act of braggadocio, then the most effective method of determining whether the results transmitted by the MBOC’s through the MCS really reflected the will of the people who voted is to open up the ballot boxes in the precincts in the barangays where the PCOS failed to transmit and to conduct an inventory of all of the CF cards and determine whether their serial numbers correspond to those of the original CF cards.

With all due respect Mr. Chairman, I believe that while in theory and in principle the computerization of our elections could be the best method in ensuring clean and honest elections, this system has a lot of loopholes which the cheaters could exploit, especially in far-flung areas where the situation is very much different than in the urban centers.

Poll watchers are not very effective in areas such as ours, especially in remote areas where there is a presence of armed groups;
The failure to transmit of the PCOS machines could both a result of a technical problem or intentional act whose purpose is to enable cheaters to gain a justification to pull out the original CF cards and replace these with pre-loaded CF cards which then are submitted to the MBOC/MCS for transmission to the PBOC/PCS.
Please take note that North Cotabato has one of the highest numbers of PCOS machines which did not transmit on election day thus justifying the manual loading of data from the PCOS CF cards to the MCS or CCS, in the case of Kidapawan City.

It is thus my recommendation, not only as a losing candidate for Governor in North Cotabato who has a pending petition for the exclusion of the results of the elections in the towns of Pikit and Carmen but also as Provincial Chairman of the Nationalist People’s Coalition, that not only should one ballot box be opened, but all the ballot boxes of the PCOS machines which failed to transmit on election day.

Please consider the following towns in the Province of North Cotabato to be covered by your No-Nonsense approach to determine the truth: Pikit, Carmen, Kabacan, Midsayap, Arakan, Alamada, Aleosan, Pigcawayan, Banisilan, Makilala, Matalam and Pres. Roxas.

For you information, I won in three of the 12 towns included in my recommendation to be subjected to manual ballot verification vis-a-vis the transmitted results.

I am including these towns just the same to ensure that I will not be the only one whose questions will be answered but my political rival’s as well.

I am also posting herewith a picture of a group of people printing ERs from a PCOS machine just outside of the Pikit Municipal Hall in North Cotabato at about 12 midnight of May 13.

It is my hope that after the manual appreciation of the ballots and the votes cast and the inventory of the CF cards and their contents, all doubts and suspicions will be finally laid to rest.

Very respectfully yours,

EMMANUEL F. PINOL

Candidate for Governor, NPC North Cotabato

Source: Manny Piñol