THE camp of Senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. filed a criminal complaints against Smartmatic executive Marlon Garcia over the controversial insertion of a computer script in the transparency server of the Commission on Elections.
“We are filing this case because we want to know the truth what happened then. We are are not accusing anyone of cheating,” said Marcos’ campaign adviser Abakada Party-List Rep. Jonathan Dela Cruz.
He said they filed the 14-page complaint against Garcia for violating the Automated Election System Law, particularly Section 28 of RA 9369 which prohibits acts that include “interfering with, impeding, absconding for purpose of gain, preventing the installation or use of computer counting devices and the processing, storage, generation and transmission of election results, data or information.”
Garcia, a Venezuelan national, was identified as the one who introduced the script change into the transparency server in violation of the Comelec protocols on the night of May 9 during the counting of the ballots.
“We don’t want this Venezuelan to get away with it,” said Dela Cruz, noting Garcia was charged earlier for a similar offense in connection with the 2013 elections.
Lawyer Jose Amor Amorado, head of the BBM Quick Count Center, said they will also request the poll body for additional access to other components of the Automated Election System in addition to a system audit of the transparency server and central server.
He said they further request the Comelec for information on the following:
• Number of laptops/servers that were reported contain rogue votes allegedly coming from the PRELAT and Mock Elecions on May 9;
• Municipalities, cities and provinces affected, and
• The measures or procedures which the Comelec took to rectify this supposed anomaly or error.
Amorado said they also sent a new letter to the Comelec seeking access to the transmission logs, list of vote counting machines, USB devices and Broadband Global Area Network used in the polls, as well as the public key and decryption key to open up the transmission files.
“This will enable us to explain, and we would be able to see, how many were the undervotes, which is critical to the count of the votes for the Vice Presidential position,” Amorado said.
He said that as of Thursday their own count revealed undervotes of around 3.5 million for the Vice Presidential position, which is unusual because this position was hotly-contested in this election.
Amorado and Dela Cruz also slammed the cancellation of the scheduled hearing last Thursday May 19 of the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on the Automated Election System due to the absence of Smartmatic officials.
“The other thing that I think has not yet been properly advised, and which we had wanted to bring to the attention of the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee, was the fact that at 10 p.m. on the same day, May 9 there was a non-transmission of votes from all over the country,” Dela Cruz said.
Dela Cruz said the incident is suspicious because the transmission of election results from all around the country stopped simultaneously for around 10 minutes when there were no reported brownouts or other incidents that could explain this glitch. This took place after the 7:30 p.m. unauthorized change of the script in the transparency server.
Amorado and Dela Cruz said they will also look into the arrival of new Certificates of Canvass from the provinces of Ilocos Norte, Negros Occidental and Nueva Ecija, noting they have already secured a copy of their COCs earlier.