 |
 |
| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| Namfrel vs. Comelec By Antonio C. Abaya June 23, 2004 Namfrel CEO Bill Luz sent an email reacting to my article �Namfrel Defended�. As it is almost as long as the space allotted for this column, I can only summarize parts of it. The entire letter, however, appears for the record in the website www.tapatt.org as part of the Reactions to �Namfrel Defended�. (My direct comments below are in parentheses.) Luz denies that Namfrel is conducting the rest of the tally in secret; he says Namfrel is now in its audit phase and that after June 5, �very few Election Returns surface�because we pretty well have most of them.� (This confirms what I have earlier said, that Namfrel is in the unique position of determining which COCs are supported by ERs, and which are not and are therefore suspect. And since Namfrel is not held back by any rules, it should make this information public, so we will know who cheated and by how much.) Luz also denies that Namfrel has a 100% coverage of the precincts, saying that �that is not possible.� But �we typically pick up about 90% of the ERs� and approximately 10% of those ERs do not get tallied due to one or more defect/s. (Namfrel sure had everyone fooled with their claim that they had a 100% coverage of the precincts, including Comelec Commissioner Rex Borra, who publicly urged Namfrel to �complete its count.� But 90% of the ERs � minus approximately 10% defectives � are sufficient to be able to tell which COCs are validated by accurate ERs and which are not, so Namfrel should not shy away from the obligation to make this information public.) Luz denies that their �terminal report before June 30� is meant to be tailor-fitted to the Congressional canvass. He says Namfrel�s tally is �based entirely on ERs and not on COCs� and was completed and made public before the Batasan started its canvass. Luz also says that Namfrel will �most definitely not play along� with the Batasan tally if it turns out to be polluted with dagdag-bawas.� (This is most reassuring to know and hear, but the proof of the pudding will be in the eating, before, on or after June 30.) I am, however, concerned that Luz seems to brag that the Namfrel quick count tally �for the top 12 senators (and beyond) were an exact match as the Comelec canvass�. Namfrel�s tally of COCs for President and Vice-President were also an exact match with the Congressional canvass�.� So Namfrel�s �terminal report� will be an �exact match� of the Congressional canvass, after all? So Namfrel will play along, after all, with the Congressional canvass even if it turns out to be polluted by dagdag bawas? Did it not occur to Luz or the other Namfrel leaders that the dagdag-bawas artists may have willfully allowed a clean senatorial vote precisely to hide their shenanigans in the presidential and vice-presidential tallies, which cannot be scrutinized to the ER level except in a post-proclamation electoral protest that can and will take forever? In an interview with ANC�s David Celdran on June 22, opposition senator Edgardo Angara (of whom I am by no means a fan) claimed that at least 14 COCs in their possession are not arithmetically supported by the ERs and SOVs in their possession. And he named many of them: Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, Basilan, Maguindanao, Sultan Kudarat, Lanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur, South Cotabato, etc, the same Muslim areas that have been the traditional spawning ground for massive electoral fraud from 1949 to 1992. And Angara also claimed that if those COCs had reflected the true vote counts in their ERs, President Arroyo�s winning margin of 1.1 million votes would be reduced by about 600,000. (I can�t recall Angara�s exact figures, and print media showed its bias by not reporting his data.) Angara was not even claiming that correcting those 14 COCs would make FPJ the real presidential winner. Since Namfrel and Angara�s KNP hold official copies of the very same documents, Luz and Namfrel should have no hesitation about proving their supposed impartiality by telling the public what the ERs in those 14 areas really add up to, compared to what appears in the COCs as tallied by the congressional canvass. Even only 90% - less 10% defectives � of the ERs, as Namfrel claims it has, would be enough to confirm or refute Angara�s allegations. A further cross-check can be provided by Raul Roco�s Aksyon Demokratiko and Alliance of Hope, which also has official copies of all documents. Meanwhile, in a lengthy article in the Sunday Inquirer of June 20, Roberto Verzola, identified as author of �Towards a Political Economy of Information,� and with email address at [email protected] (but my email to that address bounced) revealed how he analyzed the vote counts from Namfrel. Verzola took the last update from Namfrel showing a total of 24.777 million votes tabulated and broke the total down to the shares of each of 17 regions. Then, from the votes cast for GMA and FPJ, he calculated GMA�s lead over FPJ per region, as well as her total lead nationwide (515,598 or 2.08%), as of the Namfrel count of June 5.. Knowing the percentage of votes tabulated by Namfrel per region (data not available to me), Verzola extrapolated what the �final lead� would be per region if Namfrel had completed its count, on the reasonable assumption that the untabulated votes would reflect, more or less, the same choices as the tabulated ones. Verzola then summed up those �final leads� per region and came up with a �final� total (354,084 or about 1.1%) as GMA�s nationwide lead over FPJ if Namfrel had completed its count. (This confirmed my projection that GMA�s lead of 2.08% in the Namfrel tally would have dropped even more if Namfrel had continued its count after June 5. It was really �GMA By a Hair,� the title of my May 13 article.) Verzola then compared GMA�s �final lead� nationwide in Namfrel (354,084) with her lead in the Comelec tally (1,097,937) � 1,123,576 in the Congressional canvass � and calculated the discrepancy at 210.08%, which he classified as �huge.� Breaking down the comparisons between the Namfrel and Comelec tallies by region, Verzola found �huge� discrepancies in Western Mindanao (396.85%), the ARMM (310.07), and Northern Mindanao (128.33), and a �major� discrepancy in Central Mindanao (62.79). All other regions had only minor discrepancies or no discrepancy at all, except the Ilocos Region and Central Luzon, which had a minor and major discrepancy (15.59 and 118.22, respectively) in favor of FPJ. Verzola�s analysis was published two days before Angara�s interview with David Celdran, but most, if not all, of the 14 COCs that Angara claimed as fraudulent are from regions that had �huge� or �major� discrepancies in favor of GMA in Verzola�s analysis. Verzola also faulted Namfrel for tabulating GMA votes from her Cebu and Pampanga bailiwicks early (which gave her her highest lead of 13.6% on May 16 in my table), and for entering FPJ�s votes late, resulting in what he called a �skew.� Wrote Verzola: �Namfrel officials should explain this skew, especially their failure to include�information like the regional and provincial breakdown of the tally, as their Comelec accreditation required them to., and their refusal to release the information to the public when asked to do so. Furthermore, they should continue their tally to the last election return in their possession. They owe this much to the thousands who volunteered to risk their safety and their lives and the millions who pinned their hopes on Namfrel to provide a quick, honest and complete count of the May 10 elections�..� As far as I know, neither Bill Luz nor Vicky Garchitorena has reacted to Verzola�s analysis. This may sound like quibbling over petty details since, in both Verzola�s and my analyses, President Arroyo still comes out the winner, though with much smaller margins. But this involves much broader issues, including the reputation of Namfrel, the credibility (or lack thereof) of Comelec to conduct an honest election, the continued viability of our flawed electoral process, the rule of law versus the rule of smart-assed lawyers, the real size of President Arroyo�s mandate, and, ultimately, her ability (or inability) to govern this endlessly troubled country effectively. ***** The bulk of this article appears in the July 03, 2004 issue of the Philippines Free Press magazine. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Reactions to �Namfrel vs. Comelec� I�m more interested in the divergence between the exit poll done by SWS and the official count. Could you please make a presentation. Ross Tipon [email protected] June 24, 2004 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww . . Dear Tony, As usual I enjoy your usual intelligent analysis. I have some questions. Senator Arroyo during the plenary session, said that not once did the opposition show to them a copy of their own certificate of canvass. If he is correct, I wonder why Senator Angara did not show his 14 certificates of canvass. It is possible their own copies were altered by their own people which explains why their figures did not match with the electoral returns. Until I see Verzola's figures per region, and validated by Namfrel as matching theirs, I reserve making any judgement on his analysis. Why did he not put in tablular or matrix form his figures on the namfrel count so everyone including namfrel can see? I am not trying to defend GMA but I have seen many times the opposition come out with allegations and accusations that are easily refuted by K4 camp. Like comparing two different precincts. Like complaining of erasures in CoC but later finding the final figures matches the addition of the statement of votes. As Congr. Abad, said, all the negative observations of the minority group in the committee were all explained sufficiently by the comelec people. Thanks and more power to you. Bobby Tordesillas [email protected] June 24, 2004 MY REPLY. Verzola�s figures ARE in tabular form, if you will look at the Philippine Sunday Inquirer of June 20, page A16. Table l compares GMA�s lead over FPJ as per Namfrel�s last count of June 5, region-by-region and nationwide, and GMA�s �final� lead as extrapolated by Verzola from those June 5 data. Table 2 compares GMA�s �final� lead in the Namfrel tally with GMA�s final lead in the Comelec tally. This table also tabulates the discrepancies between those two tallies, region-by-region and nationwide, and classifies those discrepancies as �minor�, �major�, and �huge.� Table 3 shows the region-by-region percentages of precincts covered by Namfrel in ten regions, five where GMA led, the other five where FPJ led. wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Dear Mr. Abaya, Thank you for allowing us to state our side. However, I noticed that you have cleverly been rather selective with statements attributed to me. I think we could all shed more light on this if you would just allow your readers to read my statement in full rather than merely excerpts of it. First, you might want to fully state the reasons why we could not pick up 100% of the election returns in spite of our best efforts. As I mentioned, some of those reasons included the BEIs not turning over the Election Returns or our inability to get into hotspots or the missing pages of some Election Returns. Second, your question about our terminal report matching the Congressional canvass leaves out the fact that I stated our match in tallies referred to a list or a rank rather than a number. It stands to reason that NAMFREL's 80 percent tabulation cannot be an exact match to a 100 percent canvass by any other agency, be it COMELEC or Congress. Incidentally, NAMFREL has always believed that if any party felt that its copies of the COCs were not arithmetically supported by the ERs and SOVs in their possession, then by all means they should bring them out in the public eye. We ourselves have not seen any copies of these documents, other than the ones we have. We are not aware of any copies produced in public by any of the political parties. You are correct in pointing out that NAMFREL and the political parties hold official copies of the same documents. As part of its terminal report, NAMFREL will release its results with a provincial breakdown for ALL provinces, not just the 14 provinces which Senator Angara refers to. It will certainly be interesting to see the political partoes do the same to support their own findings. We plan to release ours before June 30. Perhaps you can write in your column how you would like to see others do the same as I notice you only focus on NAMFREL. Thank you. Bill Luz, [email protected] June 25, 2004 MY REPLY will be embedded in my next article. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |