Mangaldan, Pangasinan—The consistent runaway lead of former Senator Ferdinand “Bong-Bong” Marcos Jr. and Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte in all surveys is the result of their persistent call for unity.
Marcos and Duterte are running under the UniTeam banner.
Meanwhile, Marcos called on voters to be vigilant and guard against reported threats of large-scale fraud that could discredit the results of the upcoming political exercise.
Secretary Raul Lambino, presidential adviser for Northern Luzon and concurrent administrator and CEO of the Cagayan Economic Zone Authority (CEZA), said the great mass of Filipino people gave credence to the BBM-Sara campaign for united Philippines.
“This political contest is vividly between a message of unity and hope as against the politics of hatred, bitterness, and anger,” Lambino said.
He said during the entire electoral period from the filing of certificate of candidacies in October 2021 up to the last remaining few days of the campaign, one never heard from former Senator Marcos and Mayor Sara (Duterte-Carpio) or any member of their respective families and campaign teams, attacked the person of other candidates or anyone in their respective teams.
“This is the reason why the Filipino people have continuously rallied behind BBM-Sara and the rest of the UniTeam,” he added.
Lambino, chairman of the United Lights of Pangasinan (ULOPAN), earlier revealed that their survey showed Marcos will garner at least 70 percent, while Duterte-Carpio is expected to get more than 60 percent of the total number of votes cast in Pangasinan on the May 9 national election.
Marcos, standard-bearer of the Partido Federal ng Pilipinas, stressed that voters, not just candidates and the Commission on Elections (Comelec) should be on guard and thwart such threats to protect the sanctity of the ballots.
“We just have to be vigilant, we have to pay attention. Make sure we keep a close eye. Guard your vote, whoever you are voting for,” said
Marcos, who is number 7 on the official Comelec ballot.
In another development, President Duterte issued a call to make the May 9 national elections honest and orderly, vowing to uphold the law and not allow terrorism or any illegal activity to disrupt the upcoming polls.
Marcos also disclosed that they are concerned, not only with reported attempts by some groups in Mindanao to subvert the results of the polls, but practically the whole country with regards to possible large-scale election fraud, “since such operation is not done on the ground but in some secret places”.
Marcos added that in addition to campaigning, his camp is also focused on vote protection in these last days of the campaign.
“We have learned a lot since 2016. We spent the last six years studying the problem. We learned many, many things. We know much better now what the system is and what the weaknesses are,” he said.
Marcos, who ran for vice president in 2016, said it was thanks to the lessons they learned in that election that they were immediately alerted by the reported data breach involving poll software provider Smartmatic’s online infrastructure.
“So when there was a security breach in Smartmatic, it was seen immediately. I’m worried about the security breach because of the
changing statements. These are the things we are focusing on to make sure that the possibility of large -scale fraud is not repeated or reduced,” he said.
Previously, the Comelec conducted a walk-through of the transparency media center at the University of Santo Tomas (UST), attended by
members of the media and other election stakeholders for the May 9 local and national polls.
During the walk-through, the Comelec assured the public that the transparency server has been tested and that the unfortunate seven-hour delay in the transmittal of election results in 2019 would not happen again.
The poll body explained that part of the long transmission delay in 2019 was the policy that a resolution from Comelec en banc was required to fix the server glitch.
But it could have been done by simply rebooting the server.
Thus, the poll body has issued a resolution that the simple rebooting task could be done by the head of the technology transmission group,
provided the source code would not be touched.
Like in the past, the Comelec said there will be a 15-minute interval in the transmission of the results to the media server, but the transmission of poll results from the vote-counting machines (VCMs) to the transparency server is real-time.
The poll body has also assured of an uninterrupted power source at Comelec IFO Pier data center as it has a backup facility that will take care of any potential power supply glitch.