By Joyce Ann L. Rocamora/Philippine News Agency
MANILA — Despite protests in the past few days over the technical woes faced by the Commission on Elections (Comelec), Chairman Sheriff Abas stood by the credibility of the 2019 mid-term elections.
“As far as we are concern, we stand by the credibility of the election. Makikita mo naman ‘yan at mafi-feel ng tao kung may dayaan talaga (I think the people will see and feel if there is indeed cheating),” he said in a presser.
Abas acknowledged the glitches which resulted in the delay of the pick-up in the results during the elections and “asks (for) forgiveness to the people if they were inconvenienced.”
But those are normal, he pointed out, adding there are no perfect elections.
Abas, for his part, said the commission welcomes any invitation for probe to clear the suspicions.
“We in the en banc are very happy that there are those kinds of investigation to clear the air. For us, there had been no cheating. There were glitches which is natural,” he said.
“I was part of the 2016 elections, there were also issues on “ñ” and we were also hacked. It’s also the same with 2019, we had no problems on scripts but the system hanged for seven hours.”
Aside from the glitches, the Comelec also faced issues during the latter part of the canvassing when three foreign posts failed to transmit the certificates of canvass.
The delay, according to Abas, was due to corrupted SD cards which had to be replaced with new memory cards from their warehouse in Laguna.
Last week, several groups trooped to the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) to protest these issues, among them were Silent Majority and Makabayan.
Some nuns also participated in the May 17 rally and echoed the two groups’ calls for a detailed explanation from the Comelec.
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