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7
May
TELL US THE TRUTH, JOEY DE VENECIA URGES COMELEC
“The Commission on Elections should now be completely transparent about its preparations for the May 10 elections with its partner having reneged on its contractual obligations,” Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino (PMP) senatorial candidate Joey De Venecia III said Friday.
Only in this way would the Comelec be able to fully restore the public’s confidence in the electoral system, he said, warning that any results on Monday from the flawed automation system “will be deemed highly suspect because the PCOS machines and software are fraught with unresolved issues making them vulnerable to Digital Dagdag-Bawas. We should expect a flood of electoral protests of Ondoy-like proportions, after the results are announced.”
De Venecia lamented the conflicting information now coming from the Comelec and Smartmatic was only causing further public confusion and distrust over the poll process.
“Smartmatic says that with three days before the polls a little over 50 percent of the reconfigured flash memory cards for the precinct count optical machines have been dispatched with little hope of all 76,000 cards reaching their destinations,” de Venecia said.
The claim contradicts an earlier statement from Comelec that they only had 20,000 replacement flash cards on hand, with the balance of 56,000 still to arrive from their suppliers from Hong Kong and Taiwan.
“Where did those replacement flash cards come from? The totals do not add up,” he said, adding that it was the Comelec itself that announced that the replacement cards would not arrive until Saturday.
De Venecia also asked the Comelec to identify the “generous donors from the private sector who supposedly lent planes and helicopters” to the poll body to deliver the flash cards to 95 percent of the precincts practically overnight.
The PMP spokesman for poll automation said, “it is utterly unrealistic for the Comelec to now claim that only 5% of voting precincts are not likely to get new cards with the delivery of the PCOS machines also now being delayed.”
Under a “very best case scenario,” the poll body would have been able to replace and install the new flash cards to 27 percent of the precincts, according to the son and namesake of former Speaker Jose de Venecia.
“We in the PMP urge Chairman Jose Melo and the other commissioners to realize that they must now authorize a full manual count instead of their fall back plan of doing a 30-percent manual count,” de Venecia said. He said no less than PMP Standard Bearer Joseph Estrada will be filing a petition with the Supreme Court to delay the polls until all glitches have been settled to the public’s satisfaction.
De Venecia cited new reports indicating that as many as 10,000 voting locations have no access to the data reception and transmission sites of the telecommunication companies while field tests have indicated spotty reliability of the Smartmatic Global Broadband Area Network (GBAN) satellite uplinks.”
“There will be hell to pay if the Comelec’s stubborn insistence on doing the automated count will result in not just system failure but also the unacceptable scenario of the non-proclamation of winning candidates, or if candidates faring well in the surveys are suddenly knocked out of contention under suspicious circumstances.”
