DAVAO CITY (Mindanao Examiner / May 3, 2013) – Youth group Anakbayan on Friday said some Team PNoy ‘senatoriables’ are allegedly manipulating Internet surveys to create a false impression of their popularity and winnability.
Vencer Crisostomo, national chairperson of Anakbayan, called the manipulation of survey results as part of the so-called “Oplan 12-0,” hatched by the Aquino administration to rig the results of the 2013 elections.
“With the Automated Election System, or AES, having been proven to conduct its electronic version of dagdag-bawas in last year’s public tests, and the COMELEC refusing to review the computer program of the AES machines, there is no guarantee that the results spitted out by the AES reflect the actual will of the voters. In this scenario, the survey results are simply meant to condition the public into accepting the fraudulent outcome of the elections,” he said in a statement sent to the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner.
Some of those taking part on the surveys were also “dummy accounts” and people working with the senatorial candidates.
Crisostomo compared the operation to the practice of “sock-puppetry,” a method which was exposed by British and U.S. newspapers several years ago as used by the U.S military and many Western corporations to control adverse public opinion online.
In sock-puppetry, a handful of online operators create hundreds of accounts in social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter and used them to engage in online conversations to create the impression of pro-military, pro-corporate, and pro-Western sentiment.
Among those suspected of benefiting from these online surveys were Ramon Magsaysay, Risa Hontiveros and Bam Aquino.
Crisostomo’s accusations could not be immediately confirmed.
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