THE witness of Senate President Vicente C. Sotto III on his alleged elections fraud claims may appear in the next Senate hearing on the issue, Senator Aquilino L. Pimentel III said on Thursday.
“In the next hearing, we will just have to produce the witness of the Senate President so that we can confront allegations under oath with the answers of Comelec (Commission on Elections). So we will not be debating this issue to death,” he said during the hearing of the joint congressional oversight on the automated elections system.
Mr. Pimentel made the statement after Mr. Sotto remained unsatisfied with the Comelec’s response on the senator’s allegations that suspicious “queuing servers” were installed by Smartmatic during the transmission of votes in the 2016 polls.
At the hearing, Comelec Executive Director Jose M. Tolentino, Jr. dismissed the claims, saying the queuing servers were not used by Comelec.
“Just like what we’re saying, we have no queuing server. That is just probably a conclusion made by some IT experts,” he said.
The Comelec has also said in a written statement to congressional panel that the concept of the queue server may have been confused as well with the complex technical infrastructure of the telecommunications systems used in the elections.
However, Mr. Sotto stood his ground on the credibility of the source who he said was an employee of Smartmatic.
“An employee from Smartmatic gave me… This is why I cannot accept what you’re saying that the issue was just a suspicion of someone else. Someone from the inside has told me,” he said.
Mr. Sotto in his privileged speech last March said the issue with the queuing servers was the “one that really tainted the outcome of the elections.” He has said his allegations could be backed by a “concerned and impeccably reliable source.” — Camille A. Aguinaldo

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