By Analou De Vera
The Legal Network for Truthful Elections (LENTE) is expecting that the manual counting of votes in selected clustered precincts will finish in 15 days.
"In fifteen days, we expect and we hope to finish. If ever there will be changes on the schedule, we will update all the stakeholders," LENTE Executive Director Rona Caritos told the Manila Bulletin.
Caritos described the first day of the Random Manual Audit (RMA), which is being held at the Diamond Hotel in Manila, as "not really that eventful."
"Na-late ang bukas. Understandable. Kasi late dumating yung ibang teachers tapos nag set up pa talaga sa venue, but we expect tomorrow na wala ng glitches in so far as logistics," she said.
Asked whether they will extend their operational hours today, she replied in negative. To note, the RMA starts at 8 a.m and adjourns at 8 p.m.
"We can't. We want to extend but we want to preserve or we want to ensure the quality of the data, and when you extend beyond 8 p.m., sobrang pagod na yung mga teachers because they started working nine o'clock so, they've been working for 10 or 11 hours... so that's too tiring on their part," she said.
Caritos said that it is a "good experience" for their group to be part of the RMA committee.
"This is the first time that we are doing RMA... It is a good experience on our part because we get to see the whole process aside from the pre-election, election, we get to see the whole picture," she said.
"Hopefully our experience will give us insights--further inputs on what we do after elections," she added.
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