Three civil society groups and 34 individuals led by lawyer Harry Roque  Jr. filed a complaint before the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) against the Philippine government on the use of Precinct Count Optical Scanner (PCOS) machines that violates the people’s right to suffrage during the 2010 elections and the forthcoming 2013 elections.

A press conference organized by the Automated Election System Watch (AES Watch) was held at the University of the Philippines, Diliman for the signing and submitting of the petition to UNHRC in Switzerland.

According to Evita Jimenez, executive director of Center for People Empowerment in Governance or CenPEG and convener of AES Watch, the coming elections is an “illegal election” that will violate every people’s right to suffrage.

“Itong eleksiyon na ito ay gagamit ng isang sistema na sisikaping bilangi nang ating mga boto sa isang paraan na kuwestiyonable (This election will use a system that will count our votes in a way that is questionable),”Jimenez said.

The said groups cited the Commission on Elections’ (Comelec) lack transparency in the source code used for the PCOS machines, as well as the digital signatures that are requirements under the Omnibus Election Code of the Philippines.

The source codes as well as the digital signatures are said to be essential information that will determine the reliability of the machines to be used on May 13.

Additionally, the groups also cited the expiry of the license in 2012 of the softwares given to the Philippines via Smartmatic for the automated elections released by Dominion Voting Systems, Inc.

Rene Azurin, newspaper columnist and author of “Hacking our Democracy,” said that many Filipino are still uninformed bout the violations to their basic and democratic rights by the election system.

Meanwhile, Renato Reyes Jr., of election watchdog Kontra-Daya and Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan), lamented the fact that “election is privatized and foreign-controlled.”

Lawyer Harry Roque, for his part, said their is a high possibility that manipulation of election results will be prevalent in the coming election.

Roque said that  the law states that public and private keys must be in the hands of not just one entity, which is the private company Smartmatic.

“Ibig sabihin po, kapag ikaw ay nasa loob ng Smartmatic, puwede mong pasukin ang kahit anong server, puwede mong palitan ang resulta.Ganoon lang po kasi kadali iyon kapag hawak mo ang public and private keys (This means that if you are inside Smartmatic, you can access any server, you can change the results. That’s how easy it is if you have the public and private keys),” he explained.
This compromises the principle of “secrecy in voting, public in counting,” said Roque.

The petition, Roque said, asks for the UNHRC to declare that the use of PCOS machines is a violation of the rights of the electorate.

“Kaya po namin isinumite na ito sa UN ay dahil wala na pong pag-asa rito sa Pilipinas na magkaroon ng deklarasyon na ang paggamit ng PCOS ay isang paglabag doon sa karapatang pantao sa isang malinis at accurate na election (The reason we forwarded the complaint to UN is because there is no more hope here in our country that the use of PCOS machines will be declared as a violation of the right of the people to a clean and accurate election),” Roque added.