DAGUPAN CITY—Archbishop Emeritus Oscar Cruz on Saturday urged the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to exclude Smartmatic Corp. from bidding for the automation of the 2016 presidential elections, saying it failed to earn the public’s trust and that a whistle-blower had come to him that convinced him about irregularities in the automated election process in 2010 and 2013.
In a telephone interview, Cruz said the credibility of Smartmatic, which supplied the automated ballot counting machines used for the 2010 and 2013 elections, has “become worse,” now that it has been dealing with several lawsuits from groups of lawyers who questioned the technology it used.
Cruz said Smartmatic also failed to provide Comelec with the source code of its poll machines, which has been one of the unresolved issues of the 2010 and 2013 elections. A source code is a text-listing of commands, which are assembled into an executable computer program.
Comelec has required Smartmatic to release the source code as provided by its supply contract.
Many election cases that arose from the 2010 and 2013 polls also involved alleged anomalies that have been attributed to the poll counting machines or their erroneous use.
Smartmatic has asserted that it continues to own the technology operating the 80,000 Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines it sold to Comelec in 2013.
“Once again, here comes Smartmatic which seems to be a privileged bidder [for the 2016 polls], despite the cases filed by two groups [of lawyers who are seeking to exclude] the company from the bidding process,” Cruz said.
He said he was vouching for the integrity of the groups suing Smartmatic, adding that they were not its potential competitors.
He said the automated elections were vulnerable to cheating, despite the technology that was supposed to speed up the counting of ballots.
He said he was visited by a whistle-blower who claimed to have evidence that “a lot of magic” took place in the previous automated elections.
“With all the hocus-pocus that went through the 2013 elections, should Smartmatic be again contracted for the automation of the 2016 polls?” Cruz said. Yolanda Sotelo, Inquirer Northern Luzon