Divided into the ballot, the certificates of canvass and the election process, InterAksyon probed the various ways cheating was done at that time.

Check out the cheating via

The ballot [http://www.interaksyon.com/hoax-populi-ballot]

The COCs [http://www.interaksyon.com/hoax-populi-coc]

The election process [http://www.interaksyon.com/hoax-populi-election-process]

Lawyer Irene Guevarra, secretary of the Senate Electoral Tribunal, said the fake ballots and COCs were enough to prove there was massive fraud in 2007, although she declined to say who might have been behind the electoral fraud.

On Thursday, the SET made history as it proclaimed Pimentel the duly elected senator over Juan Miguel Zubiri, who had resigned as senator a week earlier.

It is the first time a new official had been proclaimed as a result of the SET findings. Despite the decision, Pimentel has less than a year and 10 months left in his term.

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Imagine a change from the culture of “ayes and nays” that has characterised the voting system of assemblies across the country. Nigerians would certainly be eager to know, without going through the unending labyrinth of bureaucracy, their representative’s attendance ratio, voting records and earnings.

Until 2005, German voters also had to go through a lot of trouble in order to find out such information about their MPs.

In that year Gregor Hackman and his partner Boris Hekele came up with Abgeordnetenwatch or Parliament Watch, an “innovative solution” that was designed to enhance transparency and accountability in German federal and state parliaments. This online platform is run by a small Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) made up of two webdesigners, one online editor and three interns. It also employs about 20 freelancing moderators.

“Abegeordnetenwatch.de enables citizens to ask the right questions and helps you to test how responsive your Members of Parliament are”, Mr. Hackmack told the participants of this year’s IIJ Summer Academy in Hamburg.

In the last six years, the project has grown from being a Hamburg-only platform to covering seven of the 16 German state parliaments, the Bundestag (federal parliament) and German representation in the EU Parliament.

How it works

On the website, citizens can type in their post code and are automatically taken to the profile of their representatives and can post questions to them.

After the question has been checked by one of the moderators to make sure that it is not racist, sexist or inflammatory, Abgeordnetenwatch will forward it to the MP. As soon as he or she replies, the user will be notified via email. Questions and replies are displayed online.

If there was a similar platform in Nigeria, I could, for example, draw the attention of my representative in the state assembly to the neglect of the road I use to travel to work daily. All I would need do is ask the politician online if there are any plans to do something about the state of disrepair of the road. If he or she decides to reply, I will be notified via email. The question and email would be displayed for all to read.

A political bridge

This kind of service would be particularly helpful in Nigeria where legislators have the habit of moving out of their constituencies as soon as they are elected into office. From then on they are completely disconnected from their voters.

Abegeordnetenwatch can also be a useful tool for politicians as they can connect with their constituents.

The website also shows MP’s rate of response as well as monitoring their voting pattern on core policy issues.

The opportunity to broaden transparency and accountability is perhaps the most attractive advantage of such a monitoring project.

The phenomenal growth and popularity of this German organisation in just six years (over 100,000 questions asked so far with an 80% response rate) and it its success in countries like Luxemburg and Ireland is a pointer that it stands a good chance of working in Nigeria.

However, one challenge immediately comes to mind. Nigeria has does not have the same level of internet saturation as Germany, and this would in no small way limit the impact and reach the platform would have.

The videos, which appear to have been taken at night using a mobile phone camera, were reproduced for and given to Lacson by a certain Joel Pinawin, a police officer who claims to have witnessed the switching of election returns during the 2004 polls. The other videos show ballot boxes and election returns, which by law should be inside sealed envelopes inside the ballot boxes; only the canvassers may open the ballot boxes and envelopes.

The videos, which Lacson showed reporters, seem to support the revelations of Senior Superintendent Rafael Santiago Jr. of the Philippine National Police Special Action Forces (PNP-SAF) that he and his men sneaked into the Batasang Pambansa to steal original election returns and replace these with fake ones to ensure the win of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

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But a private prosecutor in the massacre case says De Lima’s assurances are empty should Ampatuan be accepted as a state witness and enrolled in her department’s Witness Protection Program.

This is because the law, or more specifically, Republic Act 6981, “An Act Providing for a Witness Protection, Security and Benefit Program and for Other Purposes,” a witness placed under the state’s protection program should be immediately taken to a “secure housing facility” until he or she has finished testifying or “until the threat, intimidation or harassment disappears or is reduced to a manageable or tolerable level.”

“The safe house can be anywhere, it can even be in Forbes Park,” private prosecutor Harry Roque said.

Ampatuan could very well invoke this should he be taken into the WPP for the electoral fraud case since he has publicly pointed to his father, Andal Sr., and brother, Andal Jr., who are also accused principals in the massacre case, of being the real masterminds of the mass murder of 58 persons, including 32 media workers.

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UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and African leaders like Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki, his Prime Minister Raila Odinga, President Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Jakaya Kiwete of Tanzania were in attendance under a blazing sun as South Sudan President Salva Kiir hosted the noon-hour ceremony.

As reported by Kenya’s Sunday Nation President Salva Kiir Mayardit used the historic occasion of the entry of South Sudan into the world’s community of states to tell his people that they would never again wilfully return to war.
“This is a day that will be forever engraved in our hearts. Citizens in every village and county of South Sudan are celebrating. “We give praise to the Almighty God for making it possible for us to witness this day which we have waited for more than 56 years,” he said.
President Kiir told his war-weary citizens that the new nation, which was home to a conflict that claimed the highest number of civilian casualties since the Second World War, that South Sudan would now be a maker of peace and never a wager of war.
“We will live at peace with our neighbours in the north, east, west and south. We shall be part of endeavours to strive for freedom, dignity and peace.
Read more at the Sunday Nation

And another Kenya’s newspaper, The Standard on Sunday reported thus: a sea of humanity waving miniature flags erupted into delirium to celebrate the birth of a nation, after 21-years of civil war that threatened to throw into uncertainty the future of this oil-rich region.
In an ordinate defiance to Mother Nature, South Sudanese braved the scorching heat and danced, clapped, shouted and beat away drums to mark their secession from the North.
Women clad in South Sudan’s flag wept by the giant statue of liberation hero John Garang De Mabior, some holding bibles and small crosses, invoking God’s name for the blessings of a new baby.

A medley of tunes from all sorts of instruments reflected a poignant frenzy that reached its climax as the country’s flag was hoisted on a 32-metre pole and a three-stanza new anthem sung to signify the birth of the Republic of South Sudan.
Sovereign state
The crowds estimated to be more than 500,000 had trooped to the De Mabior Mausoleum grounds four hours ahead of the ceremony to witness the birth of the world’s newest nation and reflect on the effects the civil war pitting the South against the North; a war triggered by the struggle over control and sharing of resources.
Read the Standard’s version

How the media reported South Sudan’s birth
Sunday Nation
Free at Last: History mad as South Sudan becomes the latest member of family of nations
Standard on Sunday
Ecstacy in Juba as South Sudan joins club of nations
BBC online
South Sudan: World leaders welcome new nation
Leaders across the globe have been sending their congratulations to South Sudan on the day it became the world’s newest nation.
Read more from the BBC

CNN online:
South Sudan Celebrates nationhood
South Sudanese celebrate the birth of their nation
Read more here

New York Times:
After Years of Struggle, South Sudan Becomes a New Nation
JUBA, South Sudan — The celebrations erupted at midnight. Thousands of revelers poured into Juba’s steamy streets in the predawn hours on Saturday, hoisting enormous flags, singing, dancing and leaping on the back of cars.
“Freedom!” they screamed.
A new nation was being born in what used to be a forlorn, war-racked patch of Africa, and to many it seemed nothing short of miraculous. After more than five decades of an underdog, guerrilla struggle and two million lives lost, the Republic of South Sudan, Africa’s 54th state, was about to declare its independence in front of a who’s who of Africa, including the president of the country letting it go: Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan, a war-crimes suspect.
Read more at New York Times

That they did so peacefully is a credit to both the North and South Sudanese leadership.
Yet nationhood has come at steep cost: A staggering number of lives lost and people displaced in a 21-year civil war that ended only in 2005. When the assembled presidents and prime ministers board their official planes to return home, the challenges that remain will be daunting indeed
Read more in the link below:

What top leaders said:
US President Barack Obama said in a statement he was “proud to declare that the United States formally recognises the Republic of South Sudan as a sovereign and independent state upon this day, July 9 2011″.

He said: “A proud flag flies over Juba and the map of the world has been redrawn. These symbols speak to the blood that has been spilled, the tears that have been shed, the ballots that have been cast, and the hopes that have been realised by so many millions of people.”

Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir attended and called on the US to end sanctions against his country.
In his speech to the independence ceremony, Mr Bashir said: “We congratulate our brothers in the south for the establishment of their new state. We share their joy and celebration. The will of the people of the south has to be respected.”

He added: “We call on US President Barack Obama to deliver on his commitment he announced to lift the unilateral sanctions on Sudan to open to way to normalise his country’s relations with Sudan.”
UK Prime Minister David Cameron issued a statement recognising South Sudan, saying: “This is an historic day, for South Sudan and the whole of Africa.”

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sent a telegram of congratulation and China’s special envoy sent President Hu Jintao’s “warmest congratulations”.

South African President Jacob Zuma said: “We have always aspired to witness the dawn of peace, security and stability prevailing in the whole of the Sudan. That dream is coming to fruition.”

Wearing his trademark black cowboy hat, the South’s new President Salva Kiir was sworn in and pledged better times ahead.

He told guests including UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, US ambassador to the UN Susan Rice and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton: “Our martyrs did not die in vain… We have waited for more than 56 years for this day. It is a day that will be forever engraved on our hearts and minds.”

“This is a day that will be forever engraved in our hearts. Citizens in every village and county of South Sudan are celebrating.

“We give praise to the Almighty God for making it possible for us to witness this day which we have waited for more than 56 years,” he said.

President Kiir told his war-weary citizens that the new nation, which was home to a conflict that claimed the highest number of civilian casualties since the Second World War, that South Sudan would now be a maker of peace and never a wager of war.

“We will live at peace with our neighbours in the north, east, west and south. We shall be part of endeavours to strive for freedom, dignity and peace.

“Having been at the receiving end of injustice for the better part of our post-colonial history, the people of South Sudan will never accept to be aggressors.

“We have experienced what it is to be a refugee. We hope that this has been our last war and that our people will never have to leave the country to flee from insecurity,” he said.

Kenya’s President mwai Kibaki said: “I urge North and South Sudan to take advantage of the age-old links they have developed as one entity, to nurture close bilateral relations even as they assume separate sovereign identities. “This will no doubt contribute immensely to consolidating stability in the region.”

Snippets from the crowd

“My whole body feels happy,” said George Garang, an English teacher who lost his father, grandfather and 11 brothers in the war.

By sunrise, the crowds were surging through the streets of Juba, the capital, to the government quarter, where the declaration of independence would be read aloud.

Thousands of soldiers lined the freshly painted curbs, tiger patches on their arms, assault rifles in their hands. This new nation is being built on a guerrilla army — the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, whose field commanders are now South Sudan’s political leaders — and the amount of firepower here is unnerving.

By 9 a.m., the sun was dangerous. The faces, necks and arms of the people packed thousands deep around a parade stand built for the occasion were glazed with sweat. A woman abruptly slumped to the dirt and was whisked away.

“She fainted because she’s happy,” said a man in the crowd. “There will be many others today.”
“Our people fought for this day with our blood,” said 14-year-old Samuel Maniak. “This is a great day for all of us.”

Mary Muortat, one of hundreds of former refugees who spent years in exile after their parents were uprooted by the conflict, said citizens of the new nation were not daunted by the task ahead.

“After what we have been through we can no longer be shaken by anything. What others see as insurmountable challenges we view as tasks that are far easier than what we overcame in the past,” she said.

Ms Muortat, who is now a senior government official, is a daughter of Gordon Muortat, one of the founders of the first Anya-Nya war waged by Southern forces in protest at the decision by the British to thrust the North and South together at independence in 1956.

He passed away two years ago but a few other fellow fighters such as Joseph Wagu and Chagai Atem took their place on the podium on Saturday.

Citizens can now access data and participate in constitutional implementation process as well as hold the government accountable, President Kibaki said.

The government has released several large datasets, including the national census and statistics on government spending at national and county level to enhance transparency in governance and access to information.

The data presented in user-friendly format is now available online via an open data portal (www.opendata.go.ke).

see full story here

or see related video and story at Nation Newspaper in Kenya

Currently much of the public data is in hard copy and other static formats that make their use close to impossible.

Worse still, to access such data one has to seek clearance from authorities in relevant ministries or purchase it from the Government printer after going through a bureaucratic clearance process.

In an interview with Nation, Dr Ndemo said the website will be one of the first and largest government data portals in sub-Saharan Africa.

“With the open data portal, such obstacles will be a thing of the past. Information is power and we are aiming to empower citizens by enhancing their access to usable data that was not accessible easily to the public,” said Ministry of Information Permanent Secretary, Dr Bitange Ndemo.

“For the first time, Kenyans will have information about their community at their fingertips allowing them to make informed decisions at a personal level—currently most decisions people make are not scientific since they are not based on data yet data is available but inaccessible,” he added.

The PS said the portal is part of an initiative of pushing local content to the Internet and to offer over 70,000 Kenyans who graduate from Kenyan colleges annually to manipulate the data for beneficial use.

“By creating a knowledge society, you create a knowledge economy…we do not want to lag behind as we watch other countries releasing data to their people for profitable use…we have not even scratched the surface in terms of data, we are working on data centres, which was our last piece of infrastructure development,” he said.

The information on the portal is from published government data available from the ministries of Finance, Planning, Local Government, Health, Education and the Kenya National Bureaus of Statistics.

According to Dr Ndemo, much of this information is also available at the World Bank and the United Nations thus it beats logic why it has not been openly availed to citizens.

Dr Ndemo said globally, governments are adopting the concept of open data to reap benefits of a more informed citizenry.

This, he said, would deter public servants and politicians from vices such as fraud that thrive in situations where secrecy and monopoly of information abounds.

Dr Ndemo said data users will be able to create maps and other visualizations and directly download underlying data for their own uses.

“Data is not information until it is converted to make sense to users…that is what we have done at the portal,” Dr Nemo said.

This has never happened before and it welcomes an era of openness where the citizen will be empowered to put leaders to account in the use and distribution of public resources.

For instance it will now be near impossible to misuse public funds since all records pertaining spending shall be available online for citizens to scrutinise and ascertain if ‘what is on the paper tallies with what is on the ground’.

For decades, it has been the practice of some unscrupulous government officials to misuse public funds and misinform that the money has been spent to implement ‘non-existent’ projects.

Through the Kenya ICT Board, the Ministry will make a Call for Proposals for ideas on how to use government data.

The Call for Proposals is open from July 8 – August 8; the best proposals will receive $50,000 each (for companies) and $10,000 (for teams and individuals). At least 30 grants will be awarded in 2011.

The portal is managed by the Kenya ICT Board in partnership with the World Bank and Socrata, a US-based developer and provider of Open Data Services, that enable federal, state, and local governments to improve the reach, usability and social utility of their public information assets.

Local input

Private web and content developers also played part in setting up the portal.

Media Council of Kenya Chairman Levi Obonyo said the government’s move portends well for Kenya in general but will particularly boost the work of the media industry.

“It means that journalists will be able to access a lot of information that they need for their work easily unlike previously. Since media plays the watchdog role this is very facilitative in that function and I think most journalists will or should welcome this launch,” said Mr Obonyo.

Mr Obonyo said the new constitution provides for expanded freedom to information access but much needs to be done to ensure the Freedom of Information Bill (FOI), which is in the pipeline, becomes law.

“With the new constitution there is obviously a greater opening and emerging forthrightness in providing information. But this culture is not yet entrenched,” said Mr Obonyo.

Mr Obonyo said certain sectors of the civil service are yet to fully embrace the spirit of openness.

“…We should not look only at the civil service. Withholding information takes place both in the public and private sector and both sectors need as much openness as this is is good for the society,” he said.

FOI bill

However, Dr Ndemo said the FOI bill is currently at the cabinet level before it goes to Parliament for debate.

According to Michael Murungi, an ICT legal expert, the new constitution obliges government and Parliament to ensure free flow of information and the FOI will outline the processes to be followed to achieve the objective.

“Democracy dies behind closed doors. This historic event marks the end of a siri kali (top secret) era constructed on a colonial relic that founded, facilitated and perpetuated a hitherto information access caste society,” argues Alex Gakuru, Kenya ICT Consumers Association chairman.

Mr Gakuru says top echelons in the government thrived on concealing information secretly for personal gains making the public lose faith in political leaders and public institutions.

“The power class had sanitised corruption as ‘standard operating procedure’ ridiculed and punished honest officials who acted in public interest … one may be excused for reading this government openness ceremony as a major step in reclaiming our long lost national
values direction with far reaching social transformation implications,” said Mr Gakuru.

Echoing Mr Obonyo’s sentiments, Mr Gakuru said journalists’ agenda-setting stories will be based on solid official data and information translating to improved media professionalism and reduced speculative reporting due to insufficient information.

“Public Servants will henceforth live in glass houses, everything they do will be seen, everything they say will be heard and every expenditure scrutinised,” said Mr Gakuru.

World Bank Communications Officer, Mr Peter Warutere, said data availability to the public is key for development and building a knowledge economy.

“It is important that you provide the right data and it must be in the right format. This is the starting step of a long journey to creating a knowledge based economy,” said Mr Warutere.

Ayesha Vanessa Hajar Andamen, who said she is a princess, told prosecutors Thursday, during the hearing of the civil aspect of the trial, that while the life of her mother, Eden Mangudadatu Andamen, has no price, “since we belong to a royal family (the Ampatuans should pay) around P3 billion.”

Eden, the vice mayor of Mangudadatu town, was one of two sisters of the Maguindanao governor – the other was Farina, who was four months pregnant at the time – who died in the massacre along with his wife, Genalin.

Although 58 persons in all died, only 57 counts of murder have been filed against the 195 suspects in the massacre because the body of one of the victims, photojournalist Reynaldo “Bebot” Momay, has yet to be found.

“I was hurt. I cried (because) that should not have happened,” Ayesha, who works as a cashier and is the eldest of seven children, told prosecutor Peter Medalle. “She (Eden) is a Muslim woman. It is forbidden in our culture to kill a woman.”

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Saliao stood before the gallery and pointed to former Maguindanao governor Andal Ampatuan Sr. and his son Sajid Ampatuan among the suspects in the November 23, 2009 killings. Only 57 counts of murder have been filed against the accused because the body of one of the victims, that of photojournalist Reynaldo “Bebot” Momay, has yet to be found.

Suspended ARMM governor Zaldy Ampatuan, one of the prime suspects who has yet to be arraigned, did not attend Wednesday’s trial.

Saliao, who served in the Ampatuan household for 23 years, identified the senior Ampatuan as the one who ordered the attack on the convoy of journalists and relatives of current Maguindanao governor Toto Mangudadatu.

Saliao is said to have been present at the Ampatuan residence on November 17 and 22, 2009, when the plot was hatched in their mansion in Shariff Aguak. He earlier testified that clan patriarch Andal Sr., Zaldy, Sajid and other relatives and supporters were present at the dinners where the murders were planned.

Continue reading here: (http://www.interaksyon.com/article/7116/ampatuans-helper-tags-former-masters-as–brains-of-2009-massacre)