The death of former Philippine President Corazon Aquino on
August 1, 2009 should be remembered for many reasons: not just because she led
the People Power revolution in the Philippines that stood for peace and human
rights, and not just because she did it after the brutal Philippine dictator
Ferdinand Marcos had her husband assassinated, but most importantly, she stood
up to one of the first documented stolen elections.
While the American mainstream media steadfastly refuses to
recognize the use of both computer hardware and software in modern election
manipulation, President Ronald Reagan�s good buddy Marcos immediately knew the
score with the new technology and blatantly used mainframe computers to rig his
1986 election. With the support of the Reagan administration, Marcos simply had
the vote count shut down until �new tapes� were brought in that reversed Aquino�s
victory.
All of this was captured on the nightly news, and more
tellingly, in Hedrick Smith�s book, The
Power Game, and the video he did called �The Power Game: The President.�
The video documents the role of Senator Richard Lugar complaining to the world
that somebody was cooking the numbers on the election computers. Fortunately
for Aquino, most of the election workers walked out rather than accept the
rigged election.
Not the case in Ohio in 2004. And coincidentally, August 2
marks the fourth anniversary of the death of the Reverend Bill Moss. He was the
lead plaintiff who sued to overturn the 2004 Ohio presidential election. A key
difference between the people of the Philippines and most of those in the U.S.
is that the Philippine people took to the street in a general strike after the
election was stolen.
The corruption of the Marcos regime was well established,
including the bullet to the back of Corazon�s husband Senator Benigno Aquino,
Jr.�s head when he returned from exile in the U.S. to ask for a democratic
election. Recall Marcos had him assassinated right on the tarmac at the
airport.
Yet, were the dealings of the Bush administration any less
blatantly corrupt? You had the coup in Florida in the 2000 election, followed
by the illegal occupation of Iraq, and the blatant embracing of torture and
other violations of human rights before the eyes of the world. So, when Bush
crony J. Kenneth Blackwell privatized the 2004 Ohio election bringing in
private companies like Triad, Diebold, New Media, and Smartech, and the exit
polls all indicated unprecedented vote theft -- it was Moss who led the charge.
The election integrity movement remains to evolve into a
real people power movement that will wrest control of the computer software and
hardware from the private vendors with direct ties to the Republican Party and
the CIA-connected Bush family.
This weekend we should honor our election integrity heroes
who have passed. The wondrous �ordinary housewife� Corazon Aquino who became
the 11th president of the Philippines and beat back Reagan�s version of the
U.S. as an evil empire, and Bill Moss, the man behind the Moss V. Bush lawsuit
in Ohio that resulted in the first challenge to a state�s entire electoral
college slate in U.S. history.
There is much work to be done. But much inspiration is the
legacy of Aquino and Moss.
Bob
Fitrakis is the freepress.org
editor and was one of the four attorneys in the Moss v. Bush lawsuit.