FORMER Metro Manila Development Authority chairman Francis Tolentino is urging the Senate Electoral Tribunal to look into the “strange” incident of the collapse of a warehouse ceiling of Smartmatic Philippines Inc. in Sta. Rosa, Laguna last Dec. 30.
In a statement, Tolentino, who ran in the May 2016 elections and placed 13th in the senatorial race, said the ceiling collapsed and damaged the memory configuration room of Smartmatic and the Commission on Elections affecting the servers used during the May 9, 2016 national and local elections.
The servers were vital data subject of the election protest of ex-senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., who lost to Vice President Leni Robredo, he said.
Tolentino also filed an election protest against Senator Leila de Lima with Set to unseat her for alleged poll fraud.
De Lima led Tolentino by about 1.3-million votes.
In a motion filed with Set, Tolentino requested the National Bureau of Investigation to conduct a thorough probe of the “highly suspicious” collapse of the warehouse ceiling.
In the statement, the former traffic czar expressed his disappointment why Comelec was able to inform Set about the incident only last Jan. 17.
The election body asked the tribunal to “reboot, conduct diagnostics and shut down the servers” covered by the election protests to determine the extent of damage to the data contained in the servers.
Tolentino called for the determination of the “true circumstance attendant to the supposed sudden collapse of the roof of the memory configuration room in Sta. Rosa, Laguna and immediate shutdown of the server units before allowing Comelec to reboot, conduct diagnostics thereon, and shut down the server units.”
“This is highly dubious and further cast doubts on the integrity of the data of the last elections. I am sure there are closed-circuit television footages of the Smartmatic warehouse,” he said.