Is there a grand conspiracy to make the May 10 elections fail and keep President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in power beyond her term?
A high-powered delegation from the Liberal Party (LP) Wednesday trooped to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to deliver a letter from its presidential candidate, Sen. Benigno Aquino III, and his running mate Sen. Manuel “Mar” Roxas II.
In the letter to Comelec Chair Jose Melo, Aquino and Roxas said they feared a failure of elections due to the “removal of safeguards” in the ballots to be used and “faulty implementation of several features” of the automated election system (AES).
Aquino and Roxas cited eight reasons for their fears.
The LP candidates also aired their concern that the Comelec was “running out of time to fully ensure” successful conduct of the first nationwide automated elections and that it may eventually have to resort to manual counting.
Unrealistic timeline
“The unrealistic and abbreviated timeline observed by the Comelec, as well as the consequent alarming delays in the production of election paraphernalia, create a possibility for the occurrence of a failure of elections,” the letter said.
“Further, we are particularly disturbed by the fact that the Commission and Smartmatic-TIM have disabled or entirely removed crucial safeguards in the various components of the AES,” it added.
Aquino and Roxas said the removal of crucial safeguards required by law presented an opportunity for “massive electoral fraud” by certain sectors that are “desperate to hold on to power beyond their constitutional mandate at whatever cost to the integrity of our electoral process.”
The LP delegation was led by former Education Secretary Florencio Abad, former Defense Secretary Avelino Cruz Jr. and members of the party’s Bantay Balota.
The group met with Comelec officials led by Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal and Henreitta de Villa, chair of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV).
Abad, the LP campaign manager, said Aquino, Roxas and the entire party leadership were “alarmed by the overwhelming evidence that there is a grand conspiracy to make the elections fail and get someone in power now to stay beyond June 30.”
He said Aquino and Roxas cited eight reasons to justify their claim that there was a possibility of a failure in automated poll system.
These included the “questionable source code review” after the Comelec prevented a “timely and genuine review of the source code by political parties and other interested stakeholders,” Abad said.
The letter said there was also a lack of means to verify ultraviolet marks in the official ballots.
During the site visit of candidates to the National Printing Office on March 11, the letter said, the Comelec and Smartmatic-TIM confirmed that the built-in capability of the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines to read and verify the hidden ultraviolet security mark on the official ballot had been disabled.
Random manual audit
The letter also said that the parallel random manual audit required under the law should be undertaken by an independent auditor “prior to the electronic transmission of election results and proclamation.”
This should be done as it “represents the final and most crucial safeguard within the AES to ensure that the PCOS machines accurately recorded and counted the contents of the official ballots cast.”
The letter questioned the Comelec’s refusal to accredit National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections and the National Secretariat for Social Action of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines “as a citizens’ arm to conduct a public unofficial count.”
Aquino and Roxas also reiterated their earlier complaint about the “unfair ballot design.”
They noted that while Vetellano Acosta had been disqualified as a presidential candidate, the Comelec and Smartmatic-TIM still refused to remove him from the official ballot.
“Thus, Sen. Manuel Villar’s name is by his lonesome in the last column of the list of presidential candidates,” the candidates said.
They said that there was also a “lack of contingency/backup plans.”
Aquino and Roxas said the law specified that the AES was designed to include “continuity/contingency plans in case of a systems breakdown or any such eventuality that shall result in the delay, obstruction or nonperformance of the process.”
“Considering the lack of safeguards, delays, tight schedules and other problems in the implementation of the automated elections, it is imperative for the Comelec to prepare for manual elections as a contingency or backup measure,” they said.
Melo said the LP complaints were “minor” and added that Comelec could no longer change the ballot design because this would delay printing.
Isolated from reality
He also reiterated his earlier statement that there would be a failure of elections in some isolated places but that this would not alter the results of national contests.
On Tuesday, Melo dismissed as “pure fantasy” fears of a failure of elections.
In a statement Wednesday, the electoral watchdog Compact for Peaceful and Democratic Elections (Compact) said it was Melo who was isolated from reality.
“Melo is talking legalese. Truly, there will be no failure of elections legally as there would still be the ballots to count. However, there may be a failure of the automated system. This is the bone of contention,” said Compact convenor Tomas Africa.
Another compact convenor, Rodolfo Lozada, said Melo’s statement showed that the Comelec was pretending that it was ready for the elections.
“Actually, Melo’s statement undermines Comelec’s hubris. By saying that everything will be fine while almost everybody from IT experts up to different stakeholders are saying otherwise, we get a sense that they are nowhere near our reality. It’s like they are living in an alternate reality, a Disneyland of some sort,” Lozada said in the same statement.
David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer
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