DESPITE backing out as accredited citizen’s arm of the Commission on Elections (Comelec), National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) will continue their duties this Monday’s midterm election, May 13.
Namfrel secretary general Eric Jude Alvia said it will be the first time the poll watch group declined the accreditation after 36 years since it was created.
“‘Di ibig sabihin dinecline namin ang pagiging citizen’s arm, di na kami sasabak sa election. Patuloy pa rin trabaho namin. Iba lang ang pamamaraan ng pagmomonitor namin sa election (Just because we decline being a citizen’s arm, we will no longer perform our task. We will still continue, only that we will change strategy in monitoring this election),” Alvia told Sunstar Davao.
He said the accreditation was given late by Comelec last April 26, and they were only limited to conduct the Random Manual Audit.
Namfrel had been requesting Comelec to grant access in the real time transmission and tabulation data of election results coming from their server.
“Medyo lukewarm yung kanilang response. Tahimik. Walang outright denial. (Their response was a bit lukewarm. Very silent. There’s no outright denial),” Alvia said, adding that the poll body did not cite any specific reason why their petition was denied.
The Namfrel officer also said, “‘Pag ayaw nila ibigay sa Namfrel iyan, ibigay sa mga media to do the analytics (If they will not give to Namfrel, then give it to the media to their analytics).
He said the group wants to track down chain of transmission of election results to add more credibility to the automated election system (AES).
“’Di namin magampanan yung role namin as citizen arm because lagi inconclusive (We cannot conduct our role as citizen arm because our investigations remain inconclusive.) There are findings and red flags, however, these would remain red flags if you don’t investigate and dig further if you don’t provide deeper analysis,” Alvia said.
He said the group will also support other citizen’s arm group.