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8
May
Joey de Venecia III: PMP to proceed with poll auto study even after election day, proposes united front to do this and to monitor election anomalies
Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino (PMP) senatorial candidate Joey de Venecia III today declared that he will continue the party’s efforts to fully study the poll automation system even after the elections, to either validate this and propose further improvements, or to repudiate the system and refer the findings to the authorities for the filing of cases against the responsible parties.
“Even if the elections on Monday would appear to proceed smoothly, our findings show that there is a real danger of Digital Dagdag-Bawas occurring, which can only be affirmed or disproven by a comprehensive post-mortem study.”
De Venecia, PMP spokesman for poll automation, proposed that all political parties, civic groups and IT experts and organizations pool their resources into a common data base to be administered by reputable poll monitoring bodies like the PPCRV and Namfrel. This will then be studied by local and international IT experts so that a credible and comprehensive report can be prepared.
“Per instructions of our standard bearer President Joseph Estrada, the PMP will fully cooperate in this study by sharing our expertise and findings on poll anomalies, especially those on election day itself. All political parties and IT organizations and media should pool their resources to conduct a study on the automated electoral system (AES) that will be credible, comprehensive and transparent,” he said.
De Venecia and the PMP have been sharing their findings with the public by posting the documents it obtained with considerable difficulty from the Commission on Elections, as well as reviews undertaken by independent IT experts such as Sonny Valdez, Drexx Lagui, Obet Versola and Chuck Locsin at the joeydevenecia.com website.
“By sharing all our findings, we can overcome the lack of transparency of the Comelec and Smartmatic on the May 10 polls,” de Venecia said.
The PMP bet noted the failure of the Comelec to provide them all the documents relative to the automated election system (AES), despite promises to do so, saying they only received “half of what was promised.”
The data base can then be shared with or even administered by the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), the National Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) and the major media organizations, said de Venecia.
De Venecia and his team of IT experts will continue to conduct their review of the source codes to be used by the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines to be used during the polls. “We ask everyone to join us on this and other efforts to review the system, which till now the Comelec and Smartmatic have shrouded in mystery in the face of insufferable glitches and the lack of assurances that the PCOS machines are not actually Digital Garcis.”
“Since the Comelec is pushing through with the automated elections on Monday despite widespread misgivings, the very least the poll body can do is follow the Supreme Court’s order for full transparency,” de Venecia said. “To ignore the SC order is to invite suspicions that they are keeping from the public serious shortcomings of the AES,” he added.
These shortcomings could result in a partial or total failure of elections, said de Venecia. “A confluence of events can result in worst-case scenarios.”
The worst-case scenario — a total failure of elections — could have been avoided by resorting to a manual count, but the Comelec has chosen to ignore the calls from the religious, business and civil society sectors for at least a parallel manual count, according to the IT businessman.
So serious were the concerns about possible failure of the automated polls that two presidential candidates, including the PMP’s Joseph Estrada, had asked for a delay. This, too, was rejected by the Comelec.
Since the review is ongoing, results will be posted as soon as they are submitted.
“We will also submit a post-mortem review of our findings to the public after we are done,” he said. “Hopefully, the errors that occurred before, during and after the elections will be identified so that they will be avoided in the next electoral exercise.”
The worst thing that can happen is for the people to reject the results of the elections based on the automated count, according to de Venecia, which is why he has been pushing for a nationwide manual count instead. The Comelec has said that they can only conduct a manual count on 30 percent of all precincts, but de Venecia said the Comelec has utterly failed to provide a true continuity plan to take care of a possible needed manual count.
As for the parties responsible for the numerous glitches that occurred prior to the elections, de Venecia said the people should be unforgiving.
De Venecia took aim at Smartmatic, the Venezuelan firm that won the bid to automate the polls, for its haphazard preparations.
“The Comelec has said that it might file a case against Smartmatic. They should. If they do not, we will,” he said.
