Caritas Philippines, the social arm of the Cathollic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), has expressed support for the petition that asked the Supreme Court (SC) to order the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) to preserve the transmission data of the 2022 elections.
“We pray that the Supreme Court, as the highest and last-resort judicial body, will take into consideration the constitutional right of the Filipino People to be assured that their right of suffrage is respected and that every single vote is counted,” Caritas Philippines president Bishops Jose Colin said in a statement.
Caritas Philippines noted that the petition was filed by a group called “TNTrio” represented by former Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Secretary Eliseo Mijares Rio Jr., former National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) chairperson Augusto Lagman, and former Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines (FINEX) president Franklin Ysaac.
Caritas Philippines cited that the petitions indicated in the petition that the 2022 elections was ““the first time in our election history, and maybe in the whole world, that vote counting peaked at the very first hour after voting closed.”
The petitioners pointed out on the day of the election last May 9 “ in that first hour, from 7pm to 8pm, all precincts are required by the COMELEC General Instructions to print eight copies of the precinct election return before any transmissions can be made.”
“The earliest transmissions from the precinct vote counting machines (VCMs) would be at 7:30 pm. But COMELEC would like us to believe that from 7:30pm to 8:00pm, the Transparency Server would have counted a peak of 20 million plus votes, while on the next hour, from 8pm to 9pm, the same server would have counted only 13.2 million,” the petitioners observed.
Bagaforo stressed that ““if there are still questions about the credibility of the political exercise, the COMELEC should be able to present evidence at once that would erase such doubt.”
