“This is the greatest irony.”
Free, fair and credible elections are a hallmark of a democracy. And while it’s just a matter of time before the 17-million lead of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. over his closest rival, Vice President Leni Robredo, in the presidential race is validated by Congress acting as the National Board of Canvassers, questions remain in the minds of some experts over the results nearly three weeks after the May 9 political exercise.
A reader, Engr. Alex G. Serrano, sent me an email in response to my May 20 column “Dissecting the data”.
Here it is, with minor edits for clarity.
Thank you for bringing up something unusual about the recent elections, that I believe is starting to be drowned out by the “landslide” win of Bongbong Marcos Jr.
I totally agree with what you wrote in your column based on the opinion of an anonymous expert based in France, as follows.
“The consistent 68:32 relationship between the votes for Marcos Jr. and Robredo gives an almost perfect linear equation that is absolutely incredible in any electoral context.
“Since election results come in successively from various geographical regions, these should reflect variable voting bias (e.g., Marcos Jr. would have much higher results than Robredo in Ilocos and vice-versa in Robredo’s home province) and therefore vary noticeably in both directions.”
To further explain to you my views on the questionable majority victory of BBM na bukang-bibig ni Atty. Vic Rodriguez and continuously making headlines not only here in the Philippines but disgustingly, also abroad, please allow me to share with you my comments on Facebook regarding the subject.
In my opinion, the Law of Large Numbers can be used to explain the convergence of the ratio of the votes of Leni to that of BBM to a value of 47 percent towards the end.
But for me it is impossible to achieve the 47 percent at around half of the votes counted then remain constant throughout the 19 transmissions from 8:02 PM to 1:32 AM.
Where is the convergence?
Definitely for me it looks pre-programmed and requires investigation by experts!
My conclusion about the mention of the Law of Large Numbers is that it is being used to try to justify the unjustifiable, by sounding scientific!
First of all, I do believe that from the moment Sara agreed to be his VP, BBM had already practically won.
But I sincerely believe that all the operations of the BBM camp, from the surveys to the vigorous campaigns, with the help of billions of campaign funds and consequently the support of trapos and enabler- journalists, the vote-buying and outright tampering through programming etc. were all geared towards achieving a majority president-elect with over 50 percent of the votes.
They were all-out in trying to achieve this, I believe, to drown out whatever questions there will be on the credibility of the elections as well as to counter any serious DQ challenges, by loudly proclaiming that the people have spoken, let us have unity and move on!
And as a dutiful citizen, after BBM’s inauguration, I will go along with “Unity” and “Move On” with my own life. But in all honesty, I will be doing so with a heavy heart!
I also believe, however, that they made a big mistake or probably even a blunder with their “Magical 47%”!
At dahil masyadong halata, palagay ko may pumalpak!
But before the inauguration and oath-taking of BBM, I would like to express the ff:
I sincerely believe that, with the big help from Sara’s sliding down to VP to be his running mate, BBM really won.
But I also have that strong feeling that he cheated not just to win, but to win big, very big.
This was for: Propaganda addressed to the millions of his “critics”. Propaganda against disqualification cases (now with the Supreme Court), by proclaiming out loudly that the people have spoken.
And probably, most disgusting of all, propaganda addressed to the world, announcing that the son of the Dictator Marcos, who robbed our country blind, is now loved by the majority of us Filipinos.
Remember these are all propaganda achieved with the use of billions of pesos coming from “we know not where”.
To me that is the greatest irony in the last elections!
Engr. Serrano is by no means the last of the skeptics. A Facebook post by someone who said he is part of Partido Federal ng Pilipinas (PFP), the same political party that Marcos Jr. used as his vehicle for the May 9 polls, also expressed grave misgivings over the poll results. We failed to find it on Facebook when we tried to retrieve it after a while, but it had to do as well with the same 68-32 pattern in the poll results that other statistics experts had pointed out as early as May 10.
Email: ernhil@yahoo.com