AT least three commissioners of the Commission on Elections are now supporting a third-party investigation on the alleged irregularity in the operation of its transparency server for the 2019 polls, following a seven-hour data outage that drew howls of protest from political camps.
Comelec Commissioners Rowena V. Guanzon, Luie Tito F. Guia and Marlon S. Casquejo made the manifestation to finally end speculation on the credibility of their transparency server currently being kept at the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) in its headquarters in Manila.
Guanzon said among the possible groups which could review the transparency server is PPCRV itself.
“They could do that on their own since they have the experts for that,” Guanzon said.
Casquejo earlier said they are prepared to release to the public all the audit logs of their transparency server so interested parties could check if their were any irregularities within its programs.
PPCRV, National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) and other election watchdogs have been calling for a full investigation on the transparency server after it suffered a seven-hour glitch in its operation on Tuesday.
They expressed concerns this might affect the credibility of the final outcome of the 2019 elections.
Comelec Spokesman James Jimenez said the perception is false, stressing the unofficial results from the transparency server are independent from that being transmitted to their servers.
He noted the transparency server mirrors the elections returns transmitted by the vote-counting machines (VCM) to the Comelec’s official servers.
“Election results from the VCM are transmitted to the municipal canvassing. This gives rise to the official track. It [VCM] will also transmit to the transparency server to mirror what was sent to the official track,” Jimenez said.
On Tuesday, Casquejo explained that the delay in the transparency server’s relaying of election results to the media, election watchdogs and PPCRV was simply the result of a sudden surge of data which passed through it, creating a information “bottleneck.”
The explanation, however, failed to convince some groups, with some pushing for the suspension of the proclamation of winning candidates in the 2019 polls until the incident has been thoroughly probed.
Jimenez said the proposal for a suspension of proclamation is unlikely to be approved by Comelec since it is currently based on a “speculative” fraud allegation.
“They can make a call if they want, that’s their right, but in terms of likelihood its unlikely that anything will be suspended on the basis of their unsubstantiated allegations,” Jimenez said.