What happened at Novotel?

MANILA, Philippines - Did the election watchdog cry wolf?

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) inspected the Novotel hotel in Quezon City yesterday after the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) reported that voting machines were found at the hotel.

It turned out that the hotel was where 20 executives of Smartmatic, provider of the automated voting machines, were billeted. The Comelec said it did not find any voting machine.

Still, the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban), the party of presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte, said it would seek an order preventing all the Smartmatic executives from leaving the country until the PPCRV report is completely cleared up.

The Novotel is located at the Araneta Center in Cubao owned by the family of Liberal Party (LP) standard bearer Manuel Roxas II.

“After I received that report, we immediately proceeded to Novotel. When we got there, there were members of PPCRV, Kontra Daya, PDP-Laban, Liberal Party and a lot of media and they have already spoken to the resident manager, saying that they received reports and they wanted to inspect the rooms of Smartmatic employees staying in the hotel,” said Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista.

Bautista said he called the Smartmatic head in the country who said they can only conduct inspection if the guests will allow it.

“The Smartmatic personnel then allowed the groups to check the rooms, and what we found were laptop, old clothes, some towels and shampoo. No VCMs,” the Comelec chief said in a press briefing late in the afternoon at the Comelec headquarters at the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City.

“It was explained to me that these guys were working at the National Technical Support Center (NTSC) of Comelec.

They are foreigners working there to help in our elections,” he said.

“NTSC is located at Abiva Building in Araneta Avenue near Talayan Village in Quezon City. I was told they were looking for the nearest convenient hotel, and they felt that Novotel in Cubao is convenient,” he said.

Even Comelec Commissioner Rowena Guanzon denied that VCMs are being kept at Novotel.

“Kung may limang VCMs dun na nakita, ibig sabihin may limang VCMs kaming missing sa inventory (If they saw five VCMs there, it means we have five missing in our inventory),” she said.

“The problem is every time you get this second hand information, the people like to magnify it to destroy the credibility of the elections, and so that they will have something to blame if their candidates lose,” she added.

Smartmatic-TIM general manager Ellie Moreno said the support technicians are the ones testing the equipment and are responsible if the machines malfunction.

Bautista and Moreno led the inspection of rooms 502, 510, 512, 514 and 516 where the VCMs were reportedly seen.

Bautista is hoping that after showing the result of the inspection, the public can now move on.

He urged the public not to immediately believe rumors they read on social media or text messages they receive.

HDO vs Smartmatic execs mulled

PDP-Laban chair Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III yesterday said they are studying the possibility of seeking an HDO against Smartmatic Asia president Cesar Flores, technical development manager of Asia Pacific Marlon Garcia and another executive of the company.

He said over 20 Smartmatic officials should not leave the country until they have satisfactorily explained why the VCMs malfunctioned.

Pimentel said he was “extremely disappointed” with the high number of VCMs that failed, which should not have happened because these were brand new when they were procured by the Comelec.

He said that they will consult with the Bureau of Immigration and the Department of Justice about their plan.

He said that if no HDO will be released, the Smartmatic officials can freely leave the country after the elections.

Pimentel, who chairs the joint congressional oversight committee on the automated election system, has also requested the Comelec to withhold the payment for Smartmatic until it has explained what happened to the VCMs.

Clean elections

Moreno assured the public that the conduct of the general elections was clean.

He said the VCMs have no role other than for vote counting purposes.

“We count votes, that’s what we do,” he said.

PDP-Laban lawyer Charlie Ho, however, is not convinced with the inspections made at the Novotel Hotel.

He specifically questioned the time that has lapsed before the media and the election watchdogs were allowed to check the rooms.

“Hindi po natin masasabi na walang VCMs sa hotel na ito, ang sinasabi lang ng inspection ay walang VCMs sa limang kwarto na occupied by Smartmatic personnel (We cannot say that there are no VCMs in this hotel. What the inspection only showed was that there are no VCMs in the five rooms occupied by Smartmatic personnel),” Ho said.

“Five hours have lapsed since 7:30 a.m. If the media were here this morning… five to six hours, so many things can happen,” he said.

Ho also questioned why the Smartmatic technicians were staying at a hotel that is linked to Roxas.

“We cannot dismiss the allegations as untrue. The VCMs can be transferred, and it is not physically impossible to check all the rooms,” Ho added.

He said he has requested Bautista to subpoena the hotel along with its closed-circuit television cameras (CCTVs) and to conduct a continuing investigation on the reported sighting of VCMs at the hotel.

He said that they will assign some personnel to monitor that no VCMs will be transferred from the hotel until the proclamation of the next president.

PPCRV told: Apologize

The camp of Roxas said the PPCRV should apologize for spreading what it described as “unverified” report about the alleged sighting of VCMs at Novotel.

“We insist that they issue the appropriate clarification and apology. By immediately making an unverified, anonymous ‘report’ public, they unnecessarily cast doubt on the integrity of the election process,” Koalisyon ng Daang Matuwid spokesman and Akbayan Rep. Ibarra Gutierrez said.

“Now that this report has been exposed as false, kuryente ika nga (a bum steer), it behooves them to apologize and reassure the public,” he added.

Gutierrez said the PPCRV, the citizen’s arm of the Comelec, released information to the media without verifying it.

“Their representatives accompanied the Comelec and they inspected the rooms mentioned in text messages. They did not see any VCM,” the administration coalition spokesman said.

“At the minimum, we expect that they apologize because they did not see any anomaly,” he added.

‘Prosecute election rumormongers’

Election lawyer Romulo Macalintal, for his part, urged anew the Comelec to prosecute election rumor mongers.

Macalintal said the Comelec should identify and prosecute the supposed hotel employee who spread the rumor on the sighting of VCMs at Novotel.

He said the poll body should also unmask a certain Mbaid Nayre, who claimed to be a supporter of Duterte and who posted on Facebook over the weekend that there are official ballots with pink code.

He said rumors about the presence of VCMs at Novotel and the supposed pink ballots were “clearly intended to confuse voters.”

Confusing voters in any manner and propagating false information regarding official ballots and other election paraphernalia are criminal offenses under the Election Code.

“I hope our voters will not be misled by these election shenanigans whose only intention is to destroy the credibility of our election system,” he said.

He pointed out that unless the Comelec acts, rumor mongers would continue spreading false information about the conduct of the balloting and the canvassing of votes.

Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said the supposed official ballot with a pink code that was shown in Nayre’s post was a “fake” and was fabricated through a computer.

Nayre claimed that the VCMs would count the pink ballots for Roxas and his runningmate Leni Robredo even if the voter voted for other candidates. – With Alexis Romero, Jess Diaz, Romina Cabrera, Rhodina Villanueva