The Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) assailed on Sunday, May 22, the claim of poll watchdog Kontra Daya about allegedwidespread fraud and failure of elections in the recent national and local polls.
DILG Undersecretary Jonathan Malaya branded the claim as a product of wild imagination and conspiracy theories.
“Kontra Daya’s report on the 2022 election belong in the fiction section of major bookstores or libraries for being the product of a wild imagination,” Malaya said.
Malaya explained that the source code, the human-readable copy of the software running the Automated Election System (AES) of the Commission on Elections (COMELEC), was subjected to a thorough review by all political parties, cause oriented groups and information technology exports.
Under the AES law, the code must be checked by all parties at least three months before election day.
“The source code review actually started way back in October 2021. The PPCRV (Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting), Namfrel (National Citizens' Movement for Free Elections), all the major political parties and IT (Information technology) experts did a review of the software. They found no irregularities and determined that everything is in order. Don’t you think the opposition or the COMELEC citizen’s arms will just keep quiet if they found anything wrong with the software running the AES,” Malaya asked.
“Only 14 barangays in three municipalities in Lanao del Sur in BARMM (Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao) had failure of elections on election day. And the elections pushed through already in those areas,’’ he noted.
The DILG spokesperson also insisted that the allegation is an insult to the more 37,000 public school teachers, government employees and policemen who did invaluable service to the nation to ensure the successful conduct of the elections.
“Our poll workers did extended service to allay the fears and anxiety of some voters and ensure that the polls are successful and yet Kontra Daya claims that there was widespread failure of elections. It’s preposterous,’’ Malaya lamented.
He also slammed Kontra Daya for claiming widespread irregularity and violence when the 2022 elections is the safest since the start of the automated election system.
“The record speaks for itself. There were only 20 validated election related violent incidents this year compared to 60 incidents in 2019 and 133 incidents in the 2016 polls.”
Malaya also noted that because of the designation of the Philippine National Police (PNP) Focal Persons for Media Security in each city and province in the country, there were zero incidents of violence against media workers in the 2022 elections.
“For the first time in the history of Philippine elections, not a single incident of violence against a journalist or media worker was reported. It’s the safest election we have had so far,” he said.
“If there was widespread failure of elections, violence and intimidation, how come 83.1 percent or more than 56 million registered voters turned out and were able to vote on election day? This is the highest voter turn-out in the history of our country. This record is impressive given that the polls were held during a pandemic,” Malaya emphasized.
While it’s true that 915 vote counting machines were defective and needed to be replaced, Malaya explained that this accounts for less than one percent of the total number of VCMs (vote counting machines) used during the polls.
Malaya pointed out “there are also safeguards or redundancies in the voting process such as the parallel vote counting and random manual audit by poll watchdogs such as PPCRV which has so far produced a 98.73 percent match rate.’’
The PPCRV has been validating the results of the May 9 national and local elections using the physical copies of election returns (ERs) and checking them against the numbers coming out of the transparency servers of the COMELEC.
A 45-day random manual audit of ballots is also being conducted by poll watchdogs LENTE (Legal Network for Truthful Elections) and Namfrel to check the accuracy of the Vote Counting Machines. The COMELEC and election watchdogs have reported a preliminary report of 99.9 percent accuracy.
“If ever there was widespread disinformation and fake news in these elections, it’s being perpetrated by Kontra Daya and its sponsors whose main purpose is to undermine the integrity of the election process in order to silence the true will of the people,” he said.