Walang Wangwang, Walang Blinker: My Suggestions

In regard to President Noynoy’s (P-NOY) directive to strictly enforce the “No Siren, No Blinker” (WALANG WANGWANG, WALANG BLINKER) policy, except for those covered by exemptions like ambulances and police vehicles responding to emergency situations, I have the unfortunate situation of seeing an SUV with its blinkers on. I am sure that the SUV had no exception and I am almost sure that it did not have as its passenger the President, Vice President or Speaker of the house. I am also very sure that the SUV was not a marked emergency vehicle and neither was it responding to an emergency. My problem is that I did not have a camera to gather evidence that I can post here.

My suggestion is for the government to come up with text, email and phone hotlines that will handle reports. There is already the Dial 166 emergency hotline which I think is very good. However, with the increase in emergency calls, the government should add more operators and dedicated phone lines. As for the mobile text component, all cellular phone companies should dedicate one number (166?) as its emergency text number and another one (661?) to process non emergency reports. In the text hotline (661), the general public may report their corrupt barangay captains and local officials and similar complaints to include the illegal blinkers and sirens.

The authorities may then write summons to the registered owners of the vehicles or, they may conduct spot inspections. The action reports may then be loaded into a website for the general public to know that something is being done. This kind of timely action and feedback system is very important in keeping the public’s trust in the government.

A similar hotline may be done through the email system and for sure, P-NOY’s term will be seen positively by most people.

SMARTMATIC is not so smart

After the new President has been proclaimed and things have settled down, let us join our concerned countryman in Washington, Loida Nicolas Lewis in calling for an investigation of Smartmatic. This company has proven itself to have been caught unprepared to handle the Philippine elections and the trials that happened a few days ago is one of the simple proofs. In thebtrial, Smartmatic used papers that easily blot inks and caused the failure of many public tests. The public got very very scared and petitions to delay the polls were filed. Why such thing happened is beyond me.

Public trials are supposed to have been proceeded by successful laboratory trials. Let us take the case of Nokia and other firms. Do they release their latest gadgets without several successful tests? The failed test simply demonstrated Smartmatic's inadequacy to handle the elections. Before it bidded for the Comelec contract, it should have fully proven its devices matched with the appropriate types of paper. What they did (during the test) is that they used ballots that did was not accepted by the machines causing errors in the reading of votes.

I strongly believe that Smartmatic was technically not ready to handle the project and how they got the contract is worthy of public scrutiny. I call on the next government to have the company investigated by a huge panel composed of representatives from the government, business groups (Makati Business Group, PCCI, etc.), the NGO's and the techie community.

RELATED NEWS AND CLIPS:

- OBAMA asked to investigate Smartmatic

- OPEN LETTER FROM LOIDA NICOLAS LEWIS

Scams, Mostly Online

To avoid parting ways with your hard earned money, please watch the slide show (link below) of the most common internet scams in the world. Crooks are luring people who mostly wants to make easy money by coming up with very good offers. Just remember, if it is too good to be true, it probably is.

Scams that exploit the hard times.