MANILA, Philippines — Officials of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and its automated election provider Smartmatic-Total Information Management (TIM) Corp. were slapped with complaints before the ombudsman yesterday for their alleged failure to implement provisions of the country’s automated election system law.
A complaint for serious dishonesty was filed against Comelec executive director Jose Marundan Tolentino Jr. while complaints for gross neglect of duty were filed against deputy executive director Teopisto Elnas Jr. and spokesman James Jimenez. They might also face impeachment complaints.
The complainants – poll watchdogs Mata sa Balota and Automated Election System Watch as well as civil society group Citizen Crime Watch – called on the ombudsman to form a special task force that would focus on the supposed election anomalies and to place the Comelec officers under preventive suspension while investigation is ongoing.
They also included in the complaint Smartmatic-TIM, former Comelec chairman Andres Bautista who is considered a “fugitive from justice” and several other John Does.
In filing their complaint, the groups claimed that the Comelec officers failed to perform their duty of ensuring a credible automated election.
“The latest electoral disaster, which mainstream media downplays as glitch, is perhaps the worst in Philippine election history in terms of machine malfunctions that appear intentional-pretending-to-be-accidental,” a part of the four-page complaint read.
The complainants also claimed that the respondents did not execute the technical provisions of Republic Act 8436 or the Automated Election System Act and its amending law, RA 9369.
“Comelec, from 1997 to 2019 or for the past 22 years, has yet to start public consultations for (the) drafting of implementing rules. Comelec insists on using whimsical resolutions such as the prohibition against cameras which is contrary to the Omnibus Election Code Section 179 which allows taking photographs of the proceedings and incidents during counting,” the complaint also read.
Aside from this, the groups claimed that the Comelec gave Smartmatic-TIM a “monopoly” of the country’s automated election system as no biddings were allegedly done for the 2013, 2016 and 2019 polls.
Among the incidents they cited as grounds for their complaint were the alleged data breach on the Comelec’s website before the 2016 election, an incident that was dubbed as “Comeleak;” the release of a certification from the technical evaluation committee days before the election when the law says the certification must be released three months before election; and the use of machine-generated numbers provided by Comelec as digital signatures of members of electoral boards, instead of alphanumeric passcodes which they could keep.
They also mentioned the seven-hour delay of transmission of votes to the Comelec’s transparency server as among the basis. The groups maintained that the poll body has “no continuity plan.”
To them, the lapses led to the misfortunes that occurred during election day, like the breakdown of over a thousand vote-counting machines (VCMs) and the corruption of almost a thousand secure digital (SD) cards, delaying both the voting and transmission processes, and the alleged wastage of over a million votes due to “over-votes,” which should be blamed on Smartmatic-TIM.
Citizen Crime Watch president Diego Magpantay said during a forum in Manila yesterday that the Comelec officials, both present and former like Bautista, must be held liable for the continuous failure of the automated election system which was held for the fourth time.
Mata sa Balota spokesman Michael Aragon said the group also plans to file impeachment complaints against Comelec chairman Sheriff Abbas and commissioners Al Parreño, Luie Tito Guia, Ma. Rowena Amelia Guanzon, Socorro Inting, Marlon Casquejo and Antonio Kho Jr. – all impeachable officials – upon the opening of the 18th Congress in July. – With Elizabeth Marcelo