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Wednesday, June 09, 2004
Poll officer says COC errors 'honest mistakes'
MANILA -- A Commission on Elections (Comelec) officer on Tuesday admitted committing an error that caused the discrepancy in the number of voters and votes cast reflected in the certificate of canvass for the local absentee election but said it was an honest mistake.
Lawyer Betty Pizania, Comelec vice chairperson for local absentee voting, said that instead of the correct figure of 5,923 as the total number of voters, her staff mistakenly recorded 5,710 in the COC.
She attributed the error in the encoding of figures in the local absentee vote to sheer fatigue.
Opposition Sen. Aquilino Pimentel took over seven hours "filibustering" and grilling Pizania, prompting some members of the audience observing the canvassing to walk out of the session hall and denounce Tuesday's long and tedious debate.
President Arroyo's lead over her rivals in the tally by the joint congressional committee widened after some more votes in absentee voting abroad and in the country were tabulated Tuesday evening.
Arroyo garnered a total of 19,858 votes as against Fernando Poe's 8,094, Raul Roco's 5,850, Sen. Panfilo Lacson's 4,864 and Eduardo Villanueva's 3,900.
The committee tallied certificates of canvass in absentee voting in Spain, Cuba, France, Taiwan, South Korea, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Japan and votes cast in a special election by the police, military, Comelec and Department of Education personnel who were assigned far away from their regular voting areas.
In the vice presidential race, Sen. Noli de Castro still leads with 23,488 votes. In second place is Sen. Loren Legarda with 15,859 votes, followed by former Tarlac congressman Herminio Aquino with 2,190, and Rodolfo Pajo with 103.
The committee tabulated 10 more certificates of canvass on Tuesday evening.
Long speech
In her testimony before the joint congressional committee, Pizania said she realized she made a mistake in the COC of the local absentee vote last May 27 and immediately corrected it and submitted it to the Comelec en banc.
However, the correction came too late as the document bearing the incorrect figure was already submitted to the joint session of Congress sitting as the National Board of Canvassers, she explained.
She denied that the excess 213 votes went to President Arroyo.
Pizania said that before the COCs were submitted to Congress, she was busy attending to work at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) where the canvassing of votes for senators was held.
Insisting on a satisfactory explanation to the discrepancy, Pimentel grilled Pizania, saying he was even willing to speak until "doomsday" or "until kingdom come."
House Deputy Speaker Raul Gonzales bluntly called what Pimentel was doing as filibustering but Pimentel said he was just "exercising" his right.
Pimentel's speech at the session hall took over three hours, after which he questioned Pizania on the discrepancy in the certificate.
He said his move was not meant to disrupt the canvassing, adding his intention was simply to protect the votes of the people because no one knows whether the errors in the figures were intentional or not.
He said it is also vital to scrutinize the specimen signatures and thumb marks of those who filled up the COCs to determine the authenticity of the documents.
Honest mistake
Arroyo's administration said the discrepancy in the COC for local absentee voting was "an honest mistake" and that the President did not benefit from it.
Presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye said the certificate containing absentee votes of the military, police, and education officials should not be the basis of "sweeping accusations of fraud."
"(It) is unfair and uncalled for. An honest mistake was committed and President Arroyo did not benefit from it," Bunye said in a statement.
"At any rate, we are pleased that the formal canvassing of votes has been started and we are confident that Congress is steadily moving forward to an early proclamation date," he said.
Presidential campaign spokesman Michael Defensor said the administration agrees to go back to the election returns (ERs) if there is a problem with the COC and "only if there are manifest errors or alterations of the COCs."
Defensor also said only the questionable ERs should be put on hold and not the COCs. He said the number of votes on the questionable returns will just be deducted from the COCs.
He said if in the end, the number of votes in the questioned election returns will affect the results of the elections, the discrepancies must be settled before the votes are tallied.
But if the number of votes in the questioned returns is a lot less than the lead of the winning candidate, there should no longer be any tally.
He said the opposition is only scrutinizing the COCs and the returns in order to create a mindset that the administration cheated during the elections. "The opposition knows that they have lost the election but they're trying to persuade the public that there was massive cheating," he added. (JFF/JMR)
(June 9, 2004 issue)
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