‘Marcos claim speculative’

Former Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/LYN RILLON

The claims of the camp of former Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of election fraud in the decryption of secure digital (SD) memory cards are speculative and not automatically accurate.

An official of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) said it was best to await the results of the decryption process of 127 SD cards from the stripping of 1,356 vote-counting machines (VCMs) unused in the May 2016 elections.

Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez noted that the election protest that Marcos filed in the Presidential Electoral Tribunal is a “live case” which would make “any comment outside that forum potentially inappropriate.”

Consistent with theory

“The statements [of the Marcos camp] appear to be speculative in character and are, unsurprisingly, consistent with their theory. However, this does not mean that they are accurate,” he noted.

On Monday, Marcos’ lawyer Victor Rodriguez revealed that 13 of the 26 SD cards decrypted by the Comelec were found to have folders containing data, despite having come from unused VCMs.

Rodriguez alleged that the presence of folders containing data supports their claim of electoral fraud in the 2016 national and local elections.

Marcos lost to Leni Robredo in the vice presidential race, with the latter getting 14,418,817 votes compared to the former’s 14,155,344 votes.

Jimenez said the poll body cannot provide a timeline just yet on when the decryption of the 127 SD cards will be finished.

“The most prudent course of action now is to await the result of the decrypting process,” he said.