THE Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) has denied the claims of Senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s camp that a new computer command was allegedly put into the Commission on Elections’ transparency server that cut his early lead in the race for the vice presidency.
“I don’t think there’s any glitch because… we verified once the information started coming out… As far as we are concerned we have not experienced any glitch. And I’m not the only one there in PCCRV,” PPCRV spokesperson Anna De Villa Singson said in an interview with CNN Philippines’ Pia Hontiveros, adding that even news organization can attest that they did not notice any glitch.
“If they would have inserted that, they would have inserted that in the transparency server, and I don’t know which server they are referring to. There are two servers–one in PICC and the other one is in our office. What I had done right away when I hear about the presser was I had all the security logs and all the CCTV footage checked… so we know who was inside the server room, who was there,” she added.
Marcos’ camp through lawyer Francesca Huang on Wednesday claimed that a new script was introduced to the transparency server “from which the PPCRV obtain its data for the quick count,” which “was able to alter the hash codes of the packet data.” Huang said the new script increased the votes for administration candidate Leni Robredo and grabbed the lead from Marcos.
The senator’s camp, however, did not present evidence to back their claims.
Singson said the PPCRV, Comelec, and representatives of the media in the server room are continuously validating each other because they share the same data.
“There are 11 of us in that room and we all have that same data right now. We are not self-validating because we are validating each other’s data. If there were any one of us in that room who is showing different data, then we should talk… But the point is, we’re validating each other. We all have the same data coming out,” Singson said.
The son and namesake of the late dictator was leading the early count by as much as a million on Monday evening, until the widow of the late Interior secretary Jesse Robredo eventually overtook him early Tuesday.
Marcos’ camp on Tuesday asked the Comelec and the PPCRV to stop the partial and unofficial tallying of votes supposedly to avoid confusion from the official counting.
Singson said the votes from Marcos’ bailiwicks, particularly Region I, had already been transmitted by the time Robredo clinched the lead from him.
“If he’s talking about a pattern that his votes have been declining, I think he just have to look at which particular precinct has transmitted. His bailiwick which is Ilocos region, 98 percent of precincts have already transmitted. Perhaps that’s one–transmitted earlier rather than later,” she said.
“Maybe Leni’s bailiwicks came at a later time. So I don’t think we should immediately say there’s a glitch just because there is a different movement of the votes,” Singson said.
As of 6:45 p.m., Robredo still leads the vice presidential race with 13,966,851 votes, or 232,591 votes ahead Marcos’ 13,736,260.
PPCRV’s partial and unofficial count now stands at 95.64 percent transmission rate with 90,166 precincts counted–92,509 local clustered precincts and 1,767 overseas.
PPCRV is conducting a quick count in its command center at Pope Pius XII Catholic Center in Manila.