ZAMBOANGA CITY (Mindanao Examiner / May 8, 2013) – A motorcycle rider was seriously injured after he rammed into a truck transporting dozens of Precinct Count Optical Scan machines in Zamboanga City in southern Philippines, police said.
City police chief Edwin de Ocampo said the rider was rushed to hospital following the accident near Licomo village. “I was told that the rider is in serious condition,” he said.
He said the truck, carrying 51 machines, also fell in a ditch and immediately transferred to another truck.
“We can’t say whether the PCOS machines were damage because we are not even allowed to go near it,” he said.
De Ocampo said policemen escorting the truck secured the site until all PCOS machines have been secured. The machines are intended for the eastern villages of Zamboanga City.
The use of PCOS machines for May 13 local and national elections have been widely criticized due to numerous complaints of system errors and defects.
The youth group Anakbayan also expressed alarm over the reported defects of the PCOS machines
and said the Automated Election System is highly vulnerable to tampering and manipulation by the Aquino administration.
“The level of negligence and incompetence by the Commission on Elections is beyond belief. This can no longer be dismissed as human error. We believe this is part of a deliberate nationwide scheme to rig the 2013 elections for a 12-0 win by President Aquino’s candidates,” Vencer Crisostomo, national chairperson of Anakbayan, said.
He said initial reports from volunteers of the election watchdog group Kontra Daya in Davao and Metro Manila showed several problems during the testing of the machines, including the lack of proper equipment from the Commission on Elections, many Boards of Election Inspectors used packing tape to seal the PCOS machines, instead of the special tape which would protect the said machines from tampering.
Crisostomo said many machines had problems with tabulating votes, such as counting wrongly-shaded votes, and not counting certain votes. He said the testing and sealing of PCOS machines did not include the actual test of the process of transmitting the votes from the PCOS machines to the canvassing machines in the municipal and national levels.
“Hysterical claims by COMELEC commissioner Sixto Brillantes that fears about the conduct of elections are baseless exploded in his face yesterday with the massive errors and defects encountered in the final testing and sealing of PCOS,” Crisostomo said.
“Why did Brillantes keep denying these problems? Was he simply being lazy? In denial, delusional or is it part President Aquino’s plan to use deliberately defective PCOS machines, and a deliberately faulty AES?” he asked.
Crisostomo said that no one but Aquino would benefit from what he dubbed the ‘AEF’ or ‘Automated Election Fraud’.
“We must remember that the last time the numbers ‘12’ and ‘0’ were mentioned in elections, it was former Gloria Arroyo back in 2007 with her ‘election magic’ in the province of Maguindanao. The next time it was mentioned was several months ago, by Team PNOY manager Franklin Drilon. Is there a connection between the AEF and the 12-0 proclamation? We believe there is,” he said. (Mindanao Examiner)
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