So he finally admitted it. The number of precinct count optical scan machines that had experienced transmission problems, said Commission on Elections Chair Sixto Brillantes Jr. last Thursday, wasn’t in the hundreds but in the thousands—18,000, or 24-25 percent of the around 78,000 machines deployed in the midterm elections.
Commission on Elections Chair Sixto Brillantes has the right of it when he says that the 60-30-10 pattern of voting that was observed by concerned netizens in data posted by the Comelec’s transparency server for the senatorial race was not indicative of fraud. But then he spoils it all when he explains his reasoning.
ABAC Philippines presented some best practices in social enterprises in the country at the last Apec Business Advisory Council meeting in Singapore in April. These best practices were presented as innovative business models that can support entrepreneurship, encourage the growth of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and help promote inclusive growth.
Naty has not heard or read about the Marcoses, Estradas, Binays and Ampatuans wresting election victory. She is a 53-year-old beggar who looks a haggard 80. What matters is even leftover food, she shrugs.
Much of the gratification in doing election surveys comes from the voters’ overwhelming appreciation of them.
When Wendy Kopp—who founded Teach for America (TFA) in 1989 after proposing it as her undergraduate senior thesis at Princeton—was the luncheon guest of the Makati Business Club and the Management Association of the Philippines, she did not need to delve into any educational philosophy. All she needed to do was share her personal journey.
My wife Trinidad and I were among those invited by our son Freddie and his wife Nilda to a dinner at their residence on Mars Street, Pasig Subdivision here in Daet, last April. Upon entering Mars Street, the car we were riding in had to negotiate a rugged and dilapidated road.
May I react to Daniel Aloc’s letter “Genuine nationalists still can’t escape Red-tagging” (Inquirer, 5/2/13). It appears that because of Teddy Casiño’s campaign ad (“Karaniwang Tao”), the party-list Bayan Muna representative who ran for a Senate seat in the recent elections got Aloc’s vote.
The biggest winner in the 2013 elections is Grace Poe, because nobody saw it coming. The biggest loser is Sixto Brillantes, but then, he had it coming.
Marcelo H. del Pilar once quoted Jose Rizal as saying, “Where there are two Filipinos unity is not possible.” We will never know if Rizal was misquoted, but that line should encourage us to do some soul-searching.
How did the midterm elections affect the urban poor? More than any other group, the poor need free elections to improve their lives, but the simple truth seems to be that in the last poll exercise they hardly benefited. It was partly their own doing.
In Wednesday’s column I wrote about preparing for a surgery of a family member or friend, drawing from my own experience with my daughter, who had her second open heart operation last week.
