The removal of Dr. Prisco Nilo as director of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) due to “differences” with his “immediate superior” literally stirred up a storm last weekend.

PRESS STATEMENT

August 7, 2010

The removal of Dr. Prisco Nilo as director of the PAGASA due to “differences” with his “immediate superior” shows that the current government would rather fire the messsenger than upgrade the bureau's capacity to prepare for typhoons and disasters.

I recently got hold of an English translation of Boris A. Kordemsky’s The Moscow Puzzles: 359 Mathematical Recreations, which was first published in 1956. In American mathematics and science writer Martin Gardner’s introduction, the book was said to be “the best and most popular puzzle book ever published in the Soviet Union.” Being a fan of brain teasers myself, I immediately flipped through its pages and was surprised that I was already familiar with some of the puzzles involving matches and coins, some of them I learned from my brother and my father. What struck me the most, however, is the puzzle I found I remembered to have been taught me by my own mother.

Yesterday marked the turnover of the helm of government to the new president Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino 3rd. There are immense challenges that he must face—from his daang matuwid to undoing the decades-long underdevelopment that our people face. How far President Aquino’s campaign for reform will reach will depend on how far he is willing to go to reverse the policies that have kept this situation in place.

Coming from a history of election fraud and violence, it should have been no surprise that the same old problems were reported during the elections a month ago.

More than two weeks after the May 2010 election, the issues regarding its vulnerabilities keep on cropping up in different forums. Prior to Election Day, those who pointed out these vulnerabilities were alternately tagged as doomsayers and doubters by the Comelec and even by those who are only realizing the weaknesses now.

More than a week after the elections, lingering issues on the automated election system and the allegations of fraud coming from the left and right still keep us on the edge each morning as we read the news. The election was an improvement only in the sense that it is being compared to the speed of the old manual method but it is a failure when held to its promises of having a fraud-free and clean elections.

The first ever automated national elections with more than 50.7 million registered voters is still ongoing as of writing time since the transmission of the data to the national canvassing server is slow mainly due to problems of transmission in several areas of the country. As clear winners emerge in both national and local polls, it seems that although Comelec claims that they have successfully conducted the May 2010 elections, they cannot clearly say that the automated election system (AES) was a resounding success.

The automated election system that will be used on Monday is a complex collection of several component subsystems that is expected to function as one during election day. These subsystems are expected to pass on verified tallies of the results at each stage of the polling process. If any one of them fail, there would be problems with regard to the veracity of the final count and tally that will be used as the basis for proclaiming winners of the electoral contest.

It might come as a surprise to local readers to know that actual voting for the May 2010 national elections have already started for many Filipinos abroad. In many of our embassies and consulates, overseas citizens have already cast their choices for president, vice president, senators and party-list. Some voting centers like Hong Kong and Singapore are using the same Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines that are to be deployed throughout the country for the automated election system (AES).