Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista at the Comelec office in Manila. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/ARNOLD ALMACEN
Commission on Elections (Comelec) chairman听Andres Bautista听and another听official failed to get the confirmation of听the powerful Commission on Appointments (CA)听on Wednesday听over the alleged missing results involving 12 million votes in 2013.
It was Senate Minority Leader Juan Ponce Enrile who asked for the deferment of the confirmation of Bautista and Commissioner Sheriff Abas during the hearing of the CA鈥檚 committee on constitutional commissions.
Enrile asked Bautista if he was familiar with the letter of Henrietta de Villa, the national chairperson of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting, about the election results from the 18,486 precincts in the country during the 2013 elections.
Bautista answered in the negative, to which Enrile told the Comelec chair to familiarize with the issue 鈥渂ecause I will require you to submit a report to this commission before we confirm you.鈥�
鈥淏ecause this involves the fate of 18,486 precincts in the country during that election, representing about 12 million votes which still have no any electronic or manual count of votes all over the country and all over the world including the overseas of the countries so I鈥檇 like to know if Comelec did any disposition of this report. And why it was not published to the public at that time,鈥� said the senator.
Enrile, who was under hospital arrest for more than a year over the pork barrel scam, said he had a copy of the report, which was given to him in 鈥渟ecret.鈥�
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He also said that based on the information, there was an alleged ratio or a program of 60-30 and 10 in that election.
鈥淭here has never been any public discussion of this in the media, there has never been any revelation of this secret to the press and since we鈥檙e going to use the same Smartmatic program and machine in the upcoming election, we have the right, the people have the right to know what happened to [these] 18,486 precincts鈥�?鈥� Enrile said.
鈥淚f you can鈥檛 produce that information to us and I鈥檒l tell you now, you will not be confirmed here,鈥� he added.
Responding to Enrile鈥檚 queries, Bautista said: 鈥淢y understanding is that the transmission in 2013 was 77 percent but the remaining [was] manually uploaded and as I said by way of a general strategy, the Comelec would like to learn from its mistakes in 2010 and 2013鈥︹��
鈥淚 was also told that the allegedly missing results are not missing. They were simply not electronically transmitted. They were instead manually uploaded鈥n accordance with published rules鈥︹�� said the Comelec chair.
Bautista said he was also told that a report on De Villa鈥檚 letter had already been submitted to the joint congressional oversight committee.
But Enrile insisted that Bautista should submit to the committee a written report on the matter. The senator also used the same grounds to move for the deferment of Abas鈥� confirmation. Maila Ager/RAM
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