THE party-list group Confederation of Non-Stocks Savings and Loan Associations Inc. is not accepting the “connectivity issues” offered by the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting to justify the 342,082 discrepancy in the number of votes it received in the May 9 elections.
In a statement, Consla lawyer Jose Emmanuel Hernandez said PPCRV’s explanations with regard to its complaint failed to address the issue on the alleged vote manipulation last elections, but stirred more questions that would warrant an immediate investigation by the Commission on Elections.
Hernandez said PPCRV’s admission of its failure to monitor errors during its quick-count operations made it necessary and urgent for the Comelec to start with its own investigation.
“At the very least, PPCRV should be held accountable for its admitted lapses,” Consla said. “It should be banned from participating in future election quick-count operations. Its admissions show how poor its internal controls are; that its actions only further muddled and heightened the voters’ skepticism whether the nation really had clean, credible and honest elections.”
Hernandez was referring to newspaper and other media reports quoting PPCRV Communications and Media Director Ana de Villa Singson and chairwoman Henrietta de Villa blaming “connectivity issues” for the supposed error in the results projected on its screen.
While PPCRV had yet to formally respond to Consla’s complaint, Hernandez said, it was the first time that PPCRV mentioned encountering problems about connectivity during its conduct of the quick count.
Hernandez said that before Consla’s filing of the complaint, PPCRV never issued any advisories to the affected party-list groups or to the public regarding such problems.
The group also noted that, based on the screen shots provided by its witnesses, PPCRV maintained the erroneous results for several days from the commencement of the quick count.
In its complaint submitted to the PPCRV, Consla noted that during the initial hours of the PPCRV’s quick count on May 9, it had already secured 342,513 votes.
The next day, the party-list group claimed that their votes increased to 523,753 at 11 a.m. and to 555,896 by 12 noon to occupy rank 14 in the tally.
The results, which were sourced from the transparency server provided by the Comelec, were posted in the Twitter feeds of the PPCRV.
However, based on the Comelec’s finally tally for party-list groups, Consla only garnered a total of 213,814 votes. Sara Susanne D. Fabunan
Hernandez said it did not make sense why the alleged connectivity issues only affected CONSLA and not other party-list groups.
If it did affect other groups, Hernandez asked who those were and why they were also affected.
“Ms. Singson’s and Amb. De Villa’s explanation, based on the news reports, is disturbing especially in light of PPCRV’s own statements congratulating themselves regarding the speed and accuracy(?) of the quick count which it now acknowledges to be beset with inaccuracies and ‘issues’,” Hernandez said.
Aside from the connectivity issue, Singson blamed the error to having many volunteers, which made it difficult for them to control and monitor those being posted on its screen.
Singson added that they immediately worked on correcting the figures being projected on the screen by doing some adjustments to the script of the party-list election tally.
Hernandez, however, said PPCRV’s attempt to steer the blame on the discrepancy in its votes on the number of volunteers it had and the changing of the “script” raised more questions than answers.