A GROUP led by the country’s former information and communications technology chief, Eliseo M. Rio, Jr., has renewed its call to bar automated election systems provider, Smartmatic Philippines, from the 2025 midterm polls while pushing for an inquiry into its part in alleged irregularities during the 2022 presidential elections.
In a press briefing on Thursday, the September Twenty One Reform Movement (STORM) released a statement urging the government to conduct a probe “with the specific purpose of disqualification” of Smartmatic.
The group has raised suspicion of a rigged 2022 polls because of election returns from different vote-counting machines (VCMs) of Smartmatic that were allegedly transmitted from the same IP address.
Smartmatic did not immediately reply to an e-mail seeking comment, but in a Viber message, Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman George Erwin M. Garcia said the poll body had offered Rio’s group to do a manual recount. STORM, he said, declined the offer.
“I offered to them to choose ballot boxes of whatever precincts in the entire country and manually recount the ballots and let’s see if the results will tally with the printed Election returns and the results as transmitted,” said Mr. Garcia. “I even said that the entire process if accepted will be at the expense of the Commission.”
Together with Mr. Rio, former Comelec commissioner Augusto C. Lagman, Franklin Ysaac, and Leonardo O. Odoño filed the petition to ban Smartmatic from bidding on June 16.
Mr. Rio insisted: “It does not concern us who wins because of that. What we campaign for is to prevent that from happening in the next election.” — Jomel R. Paguian
