This was the statement issued yesterday by Vice President Teofisto Guingona Jr., who joined the public clamor for the poll body to accredit Namfrel to conduct its customary quick count after the Comelec declined to accredit the poll watchdog.
Comelec Chairman Benjamin Abalos earlier issued an appeal asking the public to give Comelec a chance to prove the viability of its poll modernization program.
Vote-trending is the term used for a scheme in which false initial election returns are reported to media to condition voters into accepting fraudulent poll results, sources said.
In his statement, Guingona said the Comelec "cannot simply dismiss the virtue of allowing Namfrel citizens’ quick count on the dubious premise that the Comelec is already equipped to do its own official quick count."
The Vice President left Manila for a five-day official trip to China Thursday.
Abalos has asked the public to give the Comelec a chance to effectively implement the controversial P3 billion poll modernization program during the national elections next year.
He said allegations that the country’s first-ever automated elections may fail are undermining the poll body’s efforts at "restoring the people’s faith in the election system."
The negative publicity, Abalos said, may be conditioning people’s minds that the outcome of next year’s elections will be a farce.
With the votes being counted by automated counting machines (ACMs), he said, there is no longer any need for Namfrel to conduct a separate quick count.
The Namfrel quick count that has been part of elections for the last 20 years, he said, only served to confuse the public.
Speaking before the Manila Overseas Press Club (MOPC) two weeks ago, Guingona criticized the Comelec’s modernization plans. He said the planned implementation of the automated vote counting system in the May polls is "dangerously flawed" and characterized by a series of "illegal actions," which "could lead to a failure" of the political exercise.
Guingona said all three phases of the Comelec’s preparations — from the Voters’ Validation System, Automated Counting and Canvassing, to the Electronic Transmission, Consolidation and Dissemination of Results — "should be studied carefully by the experts and, if Comelec can be convinced, to remedy the same."
"We cannot allow ourselves to have a failure of elections in 2004, he said, warning that a disorderly conduct of elections could lead the country to civil strife.
Guingona said that the automated counting and canvassing phase of the poll modernization program already hit a hitch when the technical evaluation of ACMs supplied by Mega Pacific conducted by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) "failed to meet the standards set."