A group of private individuals, led by former Vice President Teofisto Guingona, Jr., and members of the different election watchdog coalition in the country have filed civil and criminal charges against officials of the Commission on Elections and officials of the Venezuelan company Smartmatic before the Office of the Ombudsman today.
In a statement issued before the filing of the charges, the group said the respondents “should be held accountable for this terrible technological and political mess that has cost the country billions of taxpayers’ money and virtually deprived the Filipino people of their right to have their votes counted correctly in a clean, transparent and honest election system.”
The complainants include members of AES Watch, a coalition of registered non-government organizations, citizens’ poll watchdogs, policy study and professional groups including IT experts and resource persons of the Poll Automation Law, faith-based groups and other poll stakeholders.
These groups have been actively working in collective or in individual actions since 2009 to promote transparent, secured, and trustworthy automated election system in the Philippines compliant with the Election Modernization Law and industry standards.
The complaint was filed at about 1:30 p.m. today, June 10, “as part of a series of legal actions aimed at calling public attention to the serious travesty of our election system and violation of the citizens’ right to an election process that will truly reflect their sovereign will through accurate, secured and transparent counting of votes, by no less than the country’s prime election manager, the Commission on Elections (COMELEC).”
“This citizen’s action today, June 10 is being filed to hold into account public officers at the COMELEC who, in collusion with local and foreign business interests, placed in grave peril the sanctity of the ballot in the Philippines by approving the use of a highly-suspect automated elections system – the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) in the May 10, 2010 National and Local Elections and May 13, 2013 Mid-term Elections,” the group said in a statement.
The Comelec then under Chairman Jose Melo started the whole poll automation mess in 2010. For the 2013 elections, the Comelec under former election lawyer, Chairman Sixto Brillantes, Jr. has committed blunder after blunder in the poll automation process to cover up the major non-compliance of RA 9369 and industry standards on security, accuracy and transparency by its foreign technology supplier.
Included in the charges were former COMELEC Chairman Jose Melo and the COMELEC Commissioners under his term, incumbent Chairman Sixto Brillantes and the Commissioners under him and SMARTMATIC head in the Philippines Cesar Flores.
Other groups are also initiating legal actions against the COMELEC, including a possible suit to be filed by voters whose ballots were rejected by the PCOS machines in the last elections.
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