Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma. Photo from https://www.cbcponline.net/
MANILA, Philippines—A day after the Commission on Elections admitted that there were “discrepancies” in the random manual audit of ballots, the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines urged the agency to seriously address questions raised on the conduct of the May 13 polls.
In an interview with reporters on Wednesday, CBCP president Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma said the election body should be able to completely explain why the midterm balloting, the country’s second automated elections, seemed to be “out of tune.”
“There are many valid points being raised because a lot of people thought the elections were okay. But it’s just like music … we all know that it was out of tune, which puts into question so many things,” said the prelate.
Palma’s sentiments echoed the statement of the CBCP-National Secretariat for Social Action (CBCP-NASSA) issued on Tuesday. It said it was one with civil society watchdogs in demanding accountability from the Comelec.
“We call the responsible agencies for a thorough investigation of election irregularities and incidents reported, and challenge all the faithful and people of goodwill, to break the culture of impunity,” stated the CBCP-NASSA.
It also described the concluded balloting as a “mockery of our democracy” amid reports of large-scale vote-buying, malfunction of PCOS (precinct count optical scan) machines, corrupted CF (compact flash) cards and transmission failures, among others.
“NASSA is not blind to the glaring discrepancies and election violations, the highly-suspicious interventions during the canvassing, and the possible manipulation of election result during the lull hours of transmission, canvassing and consolidation of votes,” read the statement.
Palma said Wednesday that the Comelec owed the people and explanation because it was their responsibility to conduct a credible and accurate balloting. “It’s also their responsibility to provide answers to these questions that are coming from the people,” he added.
He also suggested that it was time for Comelec to evaluate the use of the controversial PCOS machines while the next elections was still three years away.
“It is no longer about the defective PCOS against going manual. What we want are machines that are reliable,” said the prelate.
On Tuesday, Comelec Chair Sixto Brillantes Jr. disclosed that initial findings of the random manual audit of the May 13 balloting showed discrepancies in some precincts compared with the computer-generated count.
These reports came from 167 out of the 234 randomly chosen precincts across the country.