Published: January 24, 2014
A month after the P300-million extended warranty contract for the maintenance and repair the PCOS machines was awarded to Smartmatic, advocate DemocracyWatch has expressed concern over continuing allegations against COMELEC’s conduct of the 2010 and 2013 automated polls, calling them “serious claims that need solid proof".
Ford Wong, DemocracyWatch, convenor, said they “put to question the legitimacy of President Aquino’s, the Vice- President Binay, Senate President Drilon, Speaker Belmonte, Legislators and all elected officials all the way down to the LGUs.” Several groups have made highly publicized statements that point to alleged flaws during the two previous national elections, including the theory that the 2013 polls had been rigged to result into a 60:30:10 winning ratio for Aquino’s Liberal Party.
“For DemocracyWatch, our stand is to further improve any form or brand of Automated Election System to a high level of reliability and confidence by implementing credible and expanded post-election audit and installing more security features”, Wong said, adding that COMELEC must put in place a legal framework should “unacceptable” discrepancies arise from the audit.
“Going back to the old ways will bring back the nightmares of election violence, massive cheating and will slide us back to an unstable situation where the legitimacy of elected leaders are in question.
This will be a disaster for our country’s democracy and will definitely affect economic stability.“
One good indicator is the number of pending cases in the Senate and House of Representatives, he said.
"For the Senate there is no pending electoral case, while in the House of Representatives, the pending cases are not even PCOS related,” he said. “We have good system in place, let us just improve on it.”
Other election watchdogs are creating their own ghosts, they only on criticize without any basis. Prove your allegations, Wong said. Democracy Watch is a civil society group that advocates strategic policy reforms and citizen-led initiatives, including honest and fair elections, all towards building a transparent and accountable democracy.
READ MORE: http://manilastandardtoday.com/2015/01/24/advocate-slams-automated-election-critics/