Senate President Vicente "Tito" Sotto III on Thursday expressed concern about the integrity of the upcoming elections after lawmakers discovered the breach in the operations of the Commission on Elections' (Comelec) service contractor, Smartmatic.
Sotto said it is necessary for the Senate to conduct further investigation into the data breach to know the extent of Comelec's "negligence."
He said lawmakers will invite election and technical experts to know how the incident could affect the upcoming May 2022 polls.
"I am concerned that our election gatekeepers lacked in ensuring the integrity of the May 9 elections. The people's right to an honest and credible election is enshrined in our Constitution and the Comelec is tasked to ensure that the results of the elections are not tainted with doubt and especially, that the conduct of the electoral exercise was not attended by anomalies," he said in a statement.
While there is no indication that the Comelec system is compromised, Sotto said, it has become clear following their meeting that "there was a breach in the Smartmatic systems."
"It is unfortunate, though, that the poll body did not immediately ask for an executive session of the JCOC (Joint Congressional Oversight Committee) when the breach happened," Sotto said.
The lawmaker also lamented that instead of being "more forthright," the poll body chose to even issue a "gag order on Smartmatic which subsequently refused to cooperate with our investigative agencies."
"We are happy that this hearing has finally brought to light what we have been asking from Comelec and the various investigative agencies for the past several hearings. Sadly, this information had been with these agencies since January and despite several attempts to obtain them, all we have been given was a runaround," Sotto said.
Lawmakers launched in January an investigation into the security of the poll body's database after the Manila Bulletin reported that Comelec servers were hacked and compromised voters' information.
"We are happy that with the assumption of the new chairman and commissioners, the Comelec would now take a more transparent and proactive stance in the conduct of this election," Sotto said.
"We also strongly recommend to the Comelec to adopt increased transparency and vote security measures as recommended by our various IT (information technology) experts, election watchdogs, and other AES (automated election system) stakeholders. These recommendations have been submitted and have been pending and unacted upon for several months already," he added.