Sen. Marcos warns of ‘major security threats’ in May 9 polls

SENATOR Imee Marcos has warned of “major electoral security threats” in the coming May 9, 2022 national and local elections after discovering that the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) had already completed the printing of more than 66 percent of the ballots to be used during election day and had already ‘configured’ most of the ‘SD’ (security data) cards to be inserted in vote-counting machines (VCMs/PCOS)—without public knowledge and monitoring.

During the Senate hearing on electoral reforms last March 9, 2022 that she chaired, Marcos said she was “shocked” to learn that the COMELEC had unilaterally waived the agreed protocols to ensure transparency and promote public confidence in the coming elections citing the restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dismissing pandemic restrictions as an excuse, Marcos asserted: “The right of suffrage cannot be compromised by the unwillingness or sense of inconvenience on the part of officialdom to allow witnesses at every juncture of the (electoral) process.”

Where observer access was easy in the past, the Comelec has been prohibiting political party representatives, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the public from monitoring the configuration of SD cards at the technical hub in Santa Rosa, Laguna, Marcos explained.

“The Comelec has already configured all the SD cards for Mindanao to Region 4, in total absence of witnesses. Only the SD cards for three regions remain to be processed,” Marcos said.

“We all know that SD cards have been the rabbit pulled out of the cheating hat in past elections,” the senator added.

Marcos’ brother, former senator Ferdinand ‘Bongbong/BBM’ Marcos, as far back as January 2017, claimed that some of the cheatings done against him during his vice-presidential contest with then Rep. Leni Robredo, were committed thru the used of the SD cards.

BBM is now contesting the presidency against Robredo and 9 other candidates, although observers say, the race would again boil down against the two of them, based on the result of pre-poll surveys.

After the 2016 polls, the COMELEC agreed to test 26 supposedly ‘empty’ SD cards but discovered 13, or half of them, contained pre-programmed data, BBM said in a press conference at the time. The SD cards contain the ‘instructions’ to operate the PCOS/VCMs.

During the Senate hearing Marcos also expressed surprise at the Comelec’s decision, “never heard of before,” to create regional technical hubs supposedly to facilitate SD card reconfiguration if voting machines bog down.

The senator added that the same lack of transparency was evident at the National Printing Office, (NPO) which was able to print 66.4 percent of the ballots for the May elections without being monitored.

“All this in deep, dark secrecy? There’s a law being violated here,” Marcos declared.

The manipulation of vote counts could also take place on Election Day because the Comelec could only partially activate digital signatures in select precincts in the country, Marcos pointed out further.

The COMELEC had lamely excused it has failed to acquire the download cables that matched the microchip mechanism called ‘i-Buttons’ that it had already purchased.

Fears that the poll body would take an active role in ensuring that cheating would happen in the coming election and that it was allowing outsiders to influence the result after the COMELEC entered into a ‘fact-checking’ and poll-reporting agreement with Rappler, an online media entity confirmed to be being funded by Americans.

The COMELEC has also been reported by GMA-7 online as talking with the United States Embassy for the deployment of American ‘poll observers’ on election day, something that has not happened since 1987, after the forced removal from office of Pres. Ferdinand Marcos, the father of the senator.