NGO seeks probe of 2010 polls, too

Amid plans by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to investigate alleged fraud that took place in the 2004 and 2007 polls, government agencies should not forget about irregularities that took place in last year’s presidential elections, according to a nongovernment organization.

The Makati City-based Tanggulang Demokrasya (TanDem), a coalition of Filipino international and local businessmen, said cheating was “at its gravest” during the 2010 elections.

TanDem said the 2010 national and local elections remained clouded by serious doubts due to grave election law violations by the Comelec and operational glitches in the automated system.

“While we hail the move to revisit the 2004 and 2007 elections, the review process should go beyond. The 2010 elections should also be scrutinized,” the group said in a statement.

The group said it believed that the safeguards in the automated system used in last year’s elections were illegally disregarded and election returns were deliberately left without signatures, opening the electoral process and results to fraud that undermined the legitimacy of the election results.

These include the suspension of the digital signatures of the members of the Board of Elections Inspectors (BEI); the suspension of the use of the ultraviolet scanners that were designed to authenticate the ballots being fed into Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines; and the disregard of the law’s provision on data retention that happened when Comelec allegedly destroyed memory cards and compact flash cards a few days after the election day.

The group also questioned what it described as the uncompleted source code review and pretesting of the PCOS machines as specified in the law; the grossly defective implementation of the Random Manual Count in blatant violation of the law in terms of accuracy; and the alleged disenfranchisement of an estimated 2 to 8 million voters of the presidential, vice-presidential and senatorial elections.

Several groups are waiting for the Comelec and its automation contractor Smartmatic to comply with an order of the Supreme Court opening for public inspection the source code or the encrypted software program that operated the PCOS machines.

TanDem also expressed support behind the Comelec’s move to investigate the 2007 senatorial elections because the electorate deserves to know the true outcome of the Maguindanao votes.

“History should reflect the true sentiments of the people in the contested elections,” the group added, adding that all Filipinos, who genuinely seek the truth behind electoral results, should fully support a “rectification” of the 2004, 2007 and most especially 2010 elections as this will affect future elections.