THE Commission on Elections had three years to prepare for the May 9 elections, but to say it had limited time to conduct the exercise is unacceptable, the group Automated Election System Watch said Wednesday.
The group said the poll body’s announcement weeks before the election that it was 100-percent ready was deceptive. In truth, it was ill-prepared and wasted valuable time for the following reasons.
“TEC certification [which includes completion of source code reviews, successful field tests and mock elections]was delayed for three months and was issued only a few days before election;
“Voter registration remained fraught with missing names of active voters while those already dead were still in the list;
AES Watch made its statement even as the Babae, Bantayan ang Eleksyon! (BaBaE!) Network joined different anti-fraud election watchdogs in a rally in front of the Philippine International Convention Center, the venue of the national canvassing of votes from thousands of precincts, to call for Comelec’s accountability over the rampant machine failures of the Automated Election System or AES.
AES Watch also said the Comelec was non-transparent (no reports were actually released) on whether the May 2-6 FTS, which was marred by discrepancies and machine failures was ever completed;
The group also cited the “Unresolved poor telecommunications infrastructures that compelled the Comelec to issue Resolution 10083 mandating the manual delivery of all 92,509 SD cards;
“The repeated non-compliance with the minimum system requirements such as digital signatures by the BEIs and BOCs, and the absence of an IRR for RA 8436 or RA 9369 (i.e., amended RA 8436) after 19 years or 9 years of the election modernization law.
“With billions of taxpayers’ money spent after three automated elections, it’s about time for Smartmatic to call it quits and for Comelec to be made into account. It’s about time to review the election modernization law. The right to vote has been at the mercy of the machine, and this must be stopped!
“We call on independent poll watch groups as well as Congress to investigate and call for full disclosure on the ill preparedness of the Comelec on complying with the minimum system requirements of the Automation law that caused high-wired tensions, confusion and irregularities, uncertain election numbers and, more importantly, widespread disenfranchisement of voters around the country.”