Not Sore Losers

I'm reposting this from the blog of Nicanor Perlas. Though some people call it sour-graping, I call it consistency. He is being true to what he has always fought for, for the principles he will always stand for. You can also view the statement here.

Evidence of Electronic Garci Mounting

JOINT PRESS STATEMENT JC de los Reyes, Jamby Madrigal, Nicanor Perlas Thursday, 13 May 2010 Since the 11th of May the media have been asking us why we have not yet conceded and why one of us retracted an earlier concession. The question is not whether we should concede to any particular candidate but whether to concede or not to the validity and integrity of an unproven and flawed automated election system. In the recent euphoria surrounding the perceived success of these automated elections we may sound like voices crying out in the wilderness, but ours is a voice of caution and reason, a stand based on principle rather than on personal politics and agenda. We have decided to put the Filipino peoples’ interests at the forefront. We have put our political agenda aside. There has been a constant and steady flow of reports from the field that have suggested that there were considerable problems with the automated elections. At this point, there are some questions that I believe need to be answered: How did the Comelec manage to recall, replace, debug and reprogram the 76,000 CF cards in a few days What happened to the supposedly recalled CF cards? Where are they? How sure are we that the same CF cards were not pre-programmed to favor particular candidates? Is the automated election system really fool-proof ? With the disabling of the UV lamps how sure are we that unused ballots were not filled up and counted in favour of certain candidates? With this in mind we cannot in principle and with a clear conscience concede to a system which is unproven, not transparent and which has been riddled with technical and security flaws. This is a national dilemma. This is why the COMELEC needs to prove to the Filipino people the transparency, accuracy and credibility of the system before we can make the correct moral and ethical choice. We are making this stand so that the Filipino people will not be rushed into thinking that the automated election system is a success when millions have been disenfranchised and millions of votes may have been incorrectly counted. This stand is not about winning or losing but about doing the right thing for the Filipino people at the risk of going against current popular public opinion. We must make sure that the current elections were clean, fair and accurate. We cannot allow the recent automated elections to become an ‘’invisible electronic Garci.’’ That would undermine our democracy.