DATE: December 27, 2002

PUBLICATION: Philippine Star

TITLE: Botong Pinoy – Here’s The Score

AUTHOR: Teodoro C. Benigno

Just more than a week ago, at a private room at the Mandarin Hotel, we were treated to a demonstration of Botong Pinoy, a computer electronic marvel that can register millions of voters in almost nothing flat, get their votes on both national and village levels, and finish the whole process within hours. Oh yes, just two hours after the voting closes, the official results are known and broadcast all over the archipelago. It works. And that is just the trouble. Anything that works in the Philippines is suspect. Regard. Cheating is eliminated almost 100 percent. No more flying or ghost voters. No more blackboards which hand-tally the votes many days, if not many weeks. No more dagdag-bawas. No more multiple registration. No more Kadena.

Vastly impressed as I was, I told my hosts of the Mega Group of Computer companies Botong Pinoy won’t sell. At least not for the 2004 presidential and national elections. And it won’t sell because it’s honest and honesty is the devil’s pitchfork, and the politician’s bane during elections. Everybody simply wants to cheat. Politicians do not lose, they are cheated. And they will welcome Botong Pinoy like an invasion of three-headed beings from the planet Mars. They agreed – namely Rafael M. Garcia III, Mega big boss and Jose O. Avedillo and Alfred S. Padlan, his top aides – this was not the time to introduce Botong Pinoy. But they would die trying.

Botong Pinoy will be bought and welcomed by Malacañang Palace only if the ruling political mandarins can use it to cheat and cheat massively. Otherwise no dice. The opposition will refuse to touch it with a ten-foot pole because they too would like to manipulate any voting device, get the bugs in so their candidates will come out the winners. And certainly you cannot get the Comelec (Commission on Elections) to roll out the red carpet because the commissioners are reportedly the biggest cheaters in the cabal. Just look at the face of one woman and you will find out why.

I suppose the only way Botong Pinoy can be made to work honestly is when you change the system.

But that is still sometime off. We are now in a game of musical chairs. The music is circus music, carousel music. The trouble is eventually there will be more chairs, less players. Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose. The more it changes, the more it remains the same.