Bongbong’s camp files raps vs. Smartmatic’s Marlon Garcia, 3 others

The camp of Sen. Bongbong Marcos on Friday filed a criminal case with the Commission on Elections (Comelec) against Smartmatic project director Marlon Garcia and three others for allegedly violating RA 9369 or the Automated Election System Law.

Atty. Jose Amorado and ABAKADA party-list Rep. Jonathan de la Cruz filed the case on Marcos' behalf.

Marcos camp files a case against Smartmatic's Marlon Garcia pic.twitter.com/9szDKcnMBX

— Jessica Bartolome (@jacbartolome) May 20, 2016

Marcos himself is not on the list of complainants.

Aside from Garcia, other respondents included Smartmatic representative Elie Moreno and Comelec officials Neli Banigued and Rouie Peñalba.

According to Marcos' lawyer, they are not alleging cheating, but searching for the truth.

"Hindi naman pinag-uusapan dito ang dayaan. Ang gusto namin malaman, anong nangyari?" De la Cruz said.

He claimed that they have already collected evidence of cheating by the rival camp of Camarines Sur Rep. Leni Robredo.

"Kung pag-uusapan ang dayaan, marami kaming ebidensya diyan," he said.

Garcia allegedly inserted a new script in Comelec's transparency server on the night of the elections, after which Marcos claimed his votes began to trim down.

Comelec had stated that the script was only tweaked to correct the "ñ" character in the names of the candidates, and maintained that it did not affect the vote results.

De la Cruz however said that there might be other breaches of protocol that were not caught.

"Ito lang ang nakita eh. Baka may iba pa," he said.

De la Cruz said that they cited two violations in their 14-page complaint.

"There are two violations that we indicated here. One is the change of the script on the evening of May 9, on election day. And of course the other problem there is the 10:00 issue, where there were no more transmissions all over the country in the transparency servers," he said.

Before Marcos' lawyers arrived at Comelec to file the complaint, the senator's supporters were already outside the building to show their support.

Supporters of Bongbong Marcos rally outside Comelec, where the VP candidate is set to file a complaint vs Smartmatic pic.twitter.com/w2UMa1M1iP

— Jessica Bartolome (@jacbartolome) May 20, 2016

The lawyers also requested that Marcos' team of IT experts be allowed to conduct an audit of the transparency server and central server in a two-page letter to Comelec Chairman Bautista.

Dela Cruz said the Marcos camp want to review the transmission logs, the digitally signed election returns, the public key and decryption key, and the VCM.

"Gusto natin makita ang mga logs. Anong nangyari nung 7:30, anong nangyaro pagkatapos nun... Gusto natin total ang makita natin, kaya importante na magkaroon ng audit," Dela Cruz.

He added that an audit was necessary because of a breach occurred in the transparency, then the other servers connected to it would have been affected as well.

On the vote canvassing on May 25, Marcos' camp will also head over to the House of Representatives and present a copy of their complaint and request for audit —KG/RSJ/NB, GMA News