168 Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy, Second Edition heard Comelec admit that it can happen.” Brillantes: “The machine is not perfect… There are certain glitches (and) deciencies… that can adversely affect the results.” That admission raised the question: Why then was Comelec insisting on perpetuating the use of an automated election system that its chairman agreed was defective? And, after the numerous “glitches” in 2010 and 2013, why hadn't Comelec blacklisted Smartmatic, the provider of this faulty automated election system, and was allowing it to bid again for the supply of the election system to be used in 2016? It should be repeated that Smartmatic's machines had NEVER, in any of its public demos, met the required accuracy standard – in fact, it fell way below that standard – and its software source code had never been made available for public scrutiny as mandated by law. Yet, Comelec had asked Congress for a budget to buy an additional 23,000 of Smartmatic's PCOS voting and counting machines to be used for the 2016 elections. The cost was 2.5-billion pesos. P109,000 per machine? Computer science professor Dr. Pablo Manalastas sniffed, “Di ba overpriced 'yan [isn't that overpriced]”? Two days before his term as Comelec chairman was to end on February 2, 2015, Brillantes signed a negotiated P269-million contract with Smartmatic for the refurbishing and maintenance of 80,000 PCOS machines. This was obviously part of a tactic to keep Comelec (and thus the Philippines) married to this shadowy foreign reseller. According to Brillantes, he signed the contract, despite it being clearly a “midnight deal”, primarily to spite his hated critics. Both AES Watch and the Integrated Bar of the Philippines led separate petitions with the Supreme Court questioning Comelec's award of such a contract without the requisite public bidding. Fortunately, the Supreme Court issued a TRO [Temporary Restraining Order] stopping the implementation of the contract. When former Far Eastern University college of law dean Andres Bautista was appointed in May 2015 by President Aquino as the term-ended Brillantes's replacement as Comelec chairman, many somewhat naïve observers hoped that the former academic might disentangle Comelec's distinctly unholy alliance with its foreign supplier Smartmatic and restore some measure of openness and integrity into our defective and untransparent automated election system. That hope was initially nurtured when Bautista made the right noises, pledged “cleaner elections”, and launched a charm initiative to try and offset Brillantes's arrogant and offensive manner. More astute observers, however, immediately understood that the appointment as Comelec chairman did not come without strings and that Baustista's active pursuit of the position – having earlier failed to get his desired appointment to a seat on the Supreme Court – effectively meant that he had accepted those strings. Essentially, those strings meant that he would follow