Comelec: No need to replace Namfrel

MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Elections (Comelec) does not see the need to replace National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) that recently withdrew its accreditation as the poll body’s citizen arm.

“There is no policy statement on that yet but if the Comelec goes into the direction of finding a Namfrel equivalent, I’m pretty sure a lot of organizations are willing to step up,” Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said yesterday.

Namfrel was lead convenor in the random manual audit (RMA) being conducted after elections to determine the accuracy of the vote counting machines.

Jimenez noted there are other agencies and organizations involved in the RMA like the Philippines Statistics Authority and Namfrel is “just one of them.”

“The groups are still there. They are not budging. They are not giving up on work,” he added.  

Namfrel withdrew its accreditation to assist in the May 13 polls due to Comelec’s decision to limit its operation to the conduct of the RMA.

In its manifestation filed before the Comelec on April 30, Namfrel said the poll body declined to grant “petitioner’s prayers related to open access and data.”

Namfrel, among others, will not have access to voter’s list, project of precincts and related precinct statistics. It will also not have direct access to the transmitted election turnover from the main server and audit logs.

“Without open access to information and data, Petitioner is unable to participate in the RMA because the inaccessibility diminishes the verifiability of data separately provided during the RMA,” Namfrel said.

Namfrel national council member Lito Averia said the restriction had to do with threats to the security of the data and the risk of possible exploitation for other intent but he noted there were many ways to address them.