(Left-Right) Tanggulang Demokrasya Chairperson Evelyn Kilayko and former Biliran Representative Atty. Glenn Chong (UNTV News)
MANILA, Philippines — The complaint against former Commission on Election (COMELEC) officials in relation to the removal of the security features of the PCOS machines used in 2010 and 2013 elections has been pending before the Office of the Ombudsman for already two and a half years.
In July 2013, civil society group Tanggulang Demokrasya filed violations of automated election law and the omnibus election code against former Comelec Chairs Sixto Brillantes Jr. and Jose Melo, and 8 other commissioners.
The petitioners claimed, the Ombudsman is yet to act on their case as of the moment.
Tanggulang Demokrasya Chairperson Evelyn Kilayko said, “The AES law is very clear that the features that we are asking here for the COMELEC to restore is there. So there is really a clear violation of the law.”
For this reason, the group Reform Philippines Coalition wants to revive the case and pursue the restoration of the security features for the machines which will be used in the May 2016 elections.
The group said they don’t believe the COMELEC can deliver clean and credible election results until they have fully obeyed the provisions of the automated elections law.
Atty. Glenn Chong said, “We will not invest our time and effort in this endeavor kung naniniwala ho kami sa kanila. Hindi ho kami naniniwala.”
( We will not invest our time and effort in this endeavor,if we believe they can [deliver]. We don’t believe they can.)
Among the features the group wants restored are the UV detector that prevents the use of tampered and fake ballots; the print out which serves as the receipt that the votes were counted correctly; and the digital signature or pin code of the board of election inspectors which proves that indeed they made the transmission of results.
They also said the COMELEC should conduct a truthful review of the source code installed in the machines.
They claimed that the review conducted by the COMELEC is only a sham and was ineffective because the IT experts are only allowed to read a copy of the program installed in the machines and they cannot run the program to test it.
Chong added that, “At the start of the source code review, many [IT experts] were going there. But they realized that they will only be shown a read-only copy, and one will only be able to read it on a laptop, so you cannot test it. They mentioned 3 tests: static test, dynamic test, transmission test – without the 3 tests, it’s useless… the COMELEC imposed a lot of limitations [in the source code review]. One of which is you have to sign a non-disclosure agreement.”
The group will hold a mass action before the Ombudsman on Friday to urge the anti-graft body to act on their complaint against former COMELEC officials. (RODERIC MENDOZA / UNTV News)
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