AN election watchdog filed a class suit for electoral sabotage against the Commission on Elections, the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting and Smartmatic before the Office of the Ombudsman Wednesday.
Running priest Robert Reyes and Rodolfo Javellana Jr., convenors of Mata sa Balota Movement, accused the respondents of violating the Automated Election Law when the hash code of the Comelec’s transparency server was altered by Marlon Garcia, Smartmatic project manager.
The alteration of the script in the transparency server, the complainants said, also changed the results of the May 9 elections.
Included in the charge sheet was PPCRV chairwoman Henrietta de Villa, and Comelec officials whose names were not identified since the poll commissioners are impeachable officers.
According to Javellana, Garcia tampered with the election results by changing the transparency server’s script, while De Villa did not do anything to stop the supposed electoral sabotage.
Earlier, Comelec head Andres Bautista said the alteration was just a “cosmetic change” to correct the spelling of candidates with the letter “ñ.”
But the movement maintained that Garcia’s act cast doubts over the integrity and credibility of the national and local elections.
“This has reference to the recent incident involving a serious breach of protocol under Comelec Resolution No. 10105. It is worthy to note that an officer of the tech firm Smartmatic broke protocol and the laws when it changed a part of the code at a server handling unofficial election results. These unauthorized acts were highly irregular and can raise doubts about the credibility of the national elections,” the complaint read.
The alteration in the script was not merely a cosmetic change, Reyes said.
“This was neither a mere violation of protocol nor a cosmetic change, it was in fact a blatant violation of the Automated Election System Law, the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act and Code of Conduct for Public Officials and other laws,” the group’s complaint read.
Reyes called on Comelec to block the departure of Garcia from the country.
In an interview, Comelec Commissioner Rowena Guanzon questioned the inclusion of Comelec officials in the suit.
“He is not my agent. Was he my agent when Marlon Garcia did what he did? He is an agent of Smartmatic, isn’t he?” Guanzon said.
“By agent, I mean employee, who acted on behalf of his principal, his corporation,” she said.
Guanzon had earlier pushed for an investigation into Garcia’s uploading of a new script to the transparency server.
She said they would act on the complaint as soon as they obtained a copy of it.
Guanzon added that an internal investigation would begin once the canvassing of votes has been concluded.
“It should be finished within 30 days to be fair to all. It should be speedy administration of justice,” Guanzon said.
On the evening of May 9, Garcia altered a few lines of the programming script of the transparency server without authorization from the Comelec en banc.
He later said it was a cosmetic change, to change the “?” to an “ñ” in some names.
Vice presidential candidate Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Wednesday called on the Comelec to let his It experts and programmers conduct an audit on the server used to count unofficial vote tallies, even as the Senate said it would inquire into the unauthorized script change.
Marcos said the audit must be done due to doubts over the integrity of the system following the introduction of a new script to the transparency server.
“The alteration removed the only security feature of the data by causing the hash codes to change,” said Marcos in a letter filed by his representatives.
“With the tampering of this sole security feature, how can we be assured that the data has not been altered in other ways or on other occasions?” the senator wrote.
“If a single person can introduce ‘cosmetic’ changes, how can we be assured that the same person and/or other persons did not introduce substantial alterations to the script and that the data had not been affected just as easily?” he added.
The Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on Automated Election System chaired by Senator Aquilino Pimentel III will conduct a Senate probe on the matter.
“Yes, all are invited. The usual suspects,” said Pimentel.
Among those invited to the hearing were Marlon Garcia, the Smartmatic project managerm Smartmatic Philippines general manager Elie Moreno, Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista, Guanzon and officials of the poll watchdog PPCRV.
Bautista earlier played down the script change, calling it “cosmetic.”