EPCC NEWS

May 18, 2010

TALES OF CHEATING: A COMELEC/PPCRV CONSPIRACY?

Los Angeles-Now it is coming out,Is this a dejavu of the 1992 presidential elections where there was computer cheating?

In 1992, the computer geeks at the COMELEC and NAMFREL made Ramos win by switching the votes of Mitra and Cojuanco to Santiago. This is the reason why Filipinos resisted automated elections because it was easier to cheat.

BANTAY PILIPINAS today reported that the prime newspaper in the Philippines- the Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI) said that while “ winners celebrate, tales of electoral fraud seem to get wilder.

This came after the much celebrated COMELEC’s self-congratulatory messages concluding the first successful automated elections in the Philippines.

The latest twist comes from a masked, bespectacled man alleging in a video, presented during a columnist’s forum, that he was involved in vote-padding and vote-shaving to benefit the current front-runners in the presidential and vice presidential races.

Sour Grapes or Real Complaints?

The witness said the votes of administration party standard-bearer Gilbert Teodoro, Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino’s Joseph Estrada and Bangon Pilipinas’ Eddie Villanueva were shaved to benefit dilaw, or yellow, referring to Liberal Party’s Benigno Aquino III.”

“It’s large-scale cheating,” Estrada said, pointing out that while members of his family swept elections in his San Juan bailiwick, he lost there. “They’re all my creation. They all won by a landslide. It was only I who lost.”

Ernesto Maceda, Estrada’s campaign manager, said his camp had received reports that between 4 million and 5 million votes had been taken away from Estrada and added to Aquino.

Electronic Garci

“This is an election you can call gruesome. This is worse than Garci,” the man said in Filipino, referring to allegations that Election Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano rigged the 2004 elections to favor President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, a charge she denies.

Cunanan said Teodoro lost about 5 million to 6 million votes, while Villanueva lost 2 million to 3 million votes. Estrada also lost a lot, but he did not provide a figure. Vice presidential candidate Loren Legarda, who has already conceded the race, supposedly lost 4 million to 5 million votes through vote-shaving. These were then transferred to Binay, according to the witness.

Presidential candidate Nicanor Perlas said the standoff at Antipolo City, where 60 voting machines were earlier found in the home of an official of Smartmatic-TIM, the Comelec’s automation partner, was proof of irregularities.

Perlas said his camp had opened two of the machines, and found that these had transmitted results on May 9 and May 11, the day before and after the elections.

The camp of Estrada also made a similar allegation, pointing out that election returns from Manila carried different dates.

Pimentel said he found it odd that an election return from a precinct in Montalban showed that Roxas got all but one of over 600 votes cast. The other vote went to Makati’s Mayor Binay.

Maceda said it was made possible by the use of “jamming devices” that allegedly blocked the transmission of results from precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines. He said “substitute results” were then sent to the Comelec and the PPCRV using “spare” PCOS machines.

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