Elections as an instrument of political control 165 before the next elections. No reform can be possible without dealing with the culture of impunity that mocks the electoral process.” Further, the election watchdog stated, “Unless all the problems of accuracy, transparency, and credibility of the voting and counting system are addressed, the results of the automated elections will continue to be contested and the proclaimed candidates will continue to hold ofce under a shadow of illegitimacy.” Finally, AES Watch reiterated in no uncertain terms: “As we rst stated in October 2010, the Smartmatic PCOS system should be junked now! The Filipino IT community and other citizens' election stakeholders should be involved in designing a new election system compliant with IT standards and best practices, with the right of suffrage, and with the demands of transparency, reliability, and auditability preserved. The right to vote should never be compromised to favor a privatized, unreliable, and unsecured election system.” The bully Brillantes snorted and threatened to sue his critics. On May 22nd, nine full days after an automated election that was (according to Brillantes) 99.9999% ready, Ateneo University and U.P. computer science professor Dr. Pablo Manalastas wondered, “Where are the election returns?” Dr. Manalastas had been downloading the precinct election returns from the Comelec website, <2013electionresults.comelec.gov.ph>, since May 14th. In his words, “It's already May 22 and so far my non-stop download has yielded only 35,000+ precinct ERs. My colleagues who are getting their ERs from the Transparency Server [a vote consolidation computer independent of Comelec's] say that they have 69% of the ERs. Where are the rest, the remaining 31% of the ERs? Isn't Comelec supposed to tell us who 100% of us voted for, not who the canvassed 69% voted for? How can the proclamation of winning candidates be based on only 69%of the ERs. Why does the Brillantes Comelec hide things from us when it is their constitutional duty to tell us?” Why indeed? Here's another interesting question: Why did Comelec direct its citizens' arm, the PPCRV, which was supposed to be manning the Transparency Server to stop reporting their count to the media? Was it because someone was manipulating the count in the Comelec Server and it would thus not match the count from the Transparency Server that was also getting its inputs directly from transmitted precinct ERs? In any case, Brillantes, now seemingly amok, had apparently abandoned any pretense that he had actually staged an ELECTION. He and his cohorts were now revealed to be villainous tyrants who had effectively slain and ended Philippine democracy. On October 9, 2014, former Philippine Computer Society president and AES Watch spokesman Prof. Nelson Celis, lawyer and former congressman Glenn Chong, former Comelec employee (and whistleblower of the ballot folder overpricing anomaly) Atty. Melchor Magdamo, Volunteers Against Crime and