The smell of People Power

Like what this space wrote a few entries ago, the next president will either win in a very clean elections with a big margin OR assume power thru People Power. The SWS in their latest survey points to the possibility of at least 49% of Filipinos going to the streets against widespread fraud and violence in this year's polls. That is a magic number for those who want to re-create EDSA.

And all indications point to a worsening peace and order situation related to the upcoming polls.

Based on Comelec estimates, there are now 50.6 million registered voters. If we are to account past history of actual voting, there will be about 40.2 million who will go to the polls and vote for their candidates.

Assuming that all 82,000 optical readers arrive before February and functions well, it will still take more than 10 hours for every precinct to accommodate 40.2 million voters. And this will definitely create anxiety and disorder.

Expect thousands, even millions of voters, disfranchised since it will take 8 minutes or more for every voter to complete the long ballot containing 300 partylist names, 10 presidentiables, a host of governors and congressmen, mayors, councilors and of course senators. This will create frustrations.

Of course, hotspots will provide traditional pockets of violence and distresses. I don't trust Gloria Arroyo when she promised to dismantle these private armies. It is simply too risky for the State to lose these armed groups which they use in fighting off insurgents in the provinces. All the more, CVOs are part of the State's anti-insurgency plan and it would simply be too complicated for the military to lose those stooges.

A failure of elections in these hotspots will surely impact on the results of national elective posts, particularly those of the president and senators. What Randy David said was that the possibility of a non-proclamation scenarion is very high since automation would not accommodate nor read the enormous volume of data that would be fed into it.