THE camp of presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte on Monday slammed administration standard bearer Manuel Roxas II over the online votes from Russia, South Korea and China.
Peter Laviña, Davao City Mayor Duterte’s spokesman, criticized what he described as the “pathetic experiment of the incumbent administration to thwart the sovereign choice of the people: Rody Duterte.”
“Roxas and his well-oiled and well-funded cohorts should be ashamed and shamed for this truly despicable act,” he said.
Roxas was a “clear beneficiary” of a sudden surge in numbers in an online poll conducted by Rappler.com, he said.
The surge was traced by Rappler.com to the mysterious respondents in Russia, South Korea and China who participated in the survey at the last minute.
Laviña criticized Roxas over the report, calling the move a “brazen attempt to reverse the people’s will.”
In December, Rappler.com initiated its monthly series of online surveys to determine the people’s preferences for the May 9 national elections through three online platforms: Facebook, mobile phones via text messaging, and within its own website.
Toward the end of December, “Duterte won overwhelmingly… and won again in January’s Facebook poll, receiving 80 percent of the nearly 50,000 votes cast,” Laviña’s statement read, quoting the news portal’s survey.
Roxas won the December survey, “but an irregular surge vote in the first three days of polling in January led us to reevaluate the December results and spot a curious pattern.”
Roxas’ numbers maintained a pattern of no-increase per hour, “but when the surge came, the numbers peaked at around 1,400 votes per hour,” Laviña said.
According to Rappler.com, “an hourly breakdown of voting clearly showed the surge,” prodding its analysts to conclude the presence of a “systematic, organized gaming in the survey.”
“If the questionable spike in the December votes were disregarded, Rappler said, the real figures would be about 49 percent for Duterte, 31 percent for Roxas, 7.3 percent for Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago, 6.4 percent for Senator Grace Poe, and 2.35 percent for Vice President Jejomar Binay,” Laviña’s statement read.