MANILA, Philippines – The camp of former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. expressed elation yesterday over the admission of an official of automated poll service provider Smartmatic that there was not just one but several other servers that existed in the Automated Election System (AES) apart from those sanctioned by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) during the May 9 polls.
Marcos’ spokesman Vic Rodriguez said there was a major breakthrough in the case with the admission of Marlon Garcia, head of the Technical Support Team of Smartmatic, that aside from the three servers sanctioned by the Comelec in the transmission of votes, there also existed a “meet me room” where several servers were placed.
Marcos’ camp earlier revealed the existence of a “fourth server” or “Queue Server” that had been kept secret from the public by both the Comelec and Smartmatic.
“This is a good day for Senator Marcos’ quest for truth because they (Smartmatic) finally admitted the existence of several other servers aside from the three legally authorized servers,” Rodriguez said.
He said that instead of the votes being transmitted directly to the three servers, namely the Municipal Board of Canvassing server, the Comelec server and the Transparency server, the results were first coursed through a Queue server.
He said that this Queue server was not revealed to the public and never subjected to a source code review, unlike the other servers used in the elections, according to Rodriguez.
There were no watchers allowed for the fourth server, he said.
Ever since the camp of Marcos made the disclosure about the existence of the “Queue Server” last May, both the Comelec and Smartmatic have been tight-lipped on its existence.
However, during the clarificatory hearing at the Manila Prosecutor’s Office on the violation of the Cybercrime Law complaint filed by former Abakada representative Jonathan de la Cruz against Smartmatic and Comelec personnel, Garcia admitted that there existed a “meet me room” where several servers were located. – With Jose Rodel Clapano