MANILA, Philippines — The Legal Network for Truthful Elections, a group of lawyers and paralegals, will be the Commission on Elections' new partner for the midterm polls this year.
Elections Commissioner Louie Guia announced Friday that Lente would be the new lead convenor in the random manual audit for next Monday's elections.
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The lawyers' group will be replacing the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections, which declined its accreditation as the citizen's arm for the midterm polls.
Comelec Commissioner @LTFGuia says @lente_ph will be the new lead convenor in RMA, replacing Namfrel. @PhilippineStar pic.twitter.com/GEfKHg3shJ
— sheila crisostomo (@shecrisostomo) May 10, 2019
According to Guia, the random manual audit of the automated elections will be conducted in 715 precincts in all legislative districts.
The Philippine Statistics Authority developed the application that would be used to select the precincts that would undergo a manual audit.
Namfrel withdrew its accreditation for the random manual audit after the Comelec declined to grant their request to access the main server data.
The elections watchdog denied suggestions that it "wants to do something else" on the data that it requested from the poll body.
"Namfrel has offered to design and maintain with and for Comelec an Open Election Data website using the only available official data in order to present information in an easily understood format, thereby achieving a transparent election," Namfrel said in a statement.
Namfrel clarified that it remains open to assisting the Comelec as a citizens' arm "should a meaningful opportunity arise." — Patricia Lourdes Viray with a report from Sheila Crisostomo