6 candidates benefited from 2016 poll ‘irregularities’ —Sotto

Six national candidates benefited from the supposed irregularities during the May 2016 automated elections, Senator Vicente Sotto III said Wednesday, citing information from a source.

"President, vice president and four senators... parang ganon 'yung kwento niya (source), hindi ko ginamit sa speech ko 'yun sapagkat hindi ko nakita mismo at wala akong kopya, sabi lang niya," Sotto said in a 24 Oras report by Sandra Aguinaldo.

During his privilege speech on Tuesday, Sotto said a transmission activity was captured as early as May 8, 2016 — the day before the election day.

"The transmission is being done by IP  Address 10.11.5.5 to 0507.ccs.pili2016pinas.net as seen in logs of SRVCNTADNS01 server which is an IP address of a clustered vote counting machine or precinct count optical scan," Sotto said.

Sotto said it was later found out that 0507.ccs.pili2016pinas.net was the Consolidated Canvassing System (CCS) of Libon municipality in Albay province, while 5801.ccs.pili2016pinas is the CCS of Angono, Rizal.

The senator also speculated that there was foreign access in the election servers as there were series of access "before, during, and after the election."

House Minority leader Danilo Suarez said he had obtained reports similar to Sotto's information. The lawmaker previously filed a resolution to investigate possible irregularities in the 2016 polls.

"There is a deliberate attempt na kung maliit lang ang lamang ni Pangulong [Rodrigo] Duterte, baka ang presidente natin ngayon, Liberal [Party]," Suarez said.

Liberal Party's bet, former Senator Mar Roxas, placed second in the 2016 presidential race.

VP race

Sotto, meanwhile, did not drop names as to the vice presidential candidate who benefited from the supposed election irregularities.

The camp of former Senator Bongbong Marcos welcomed the news, noting that Marcos is glad that other "patriotic leaders" notice the alleged manipulation of the poll results.

"Former Senator Bongbong Marcos is happy that other patriotic leaders and stakeholders have seen the extent of conspiracy, interference and manipulation of the election results of the Smartmatic," Marcos' camp said.

On the other hand, Vice President Leni Robredo, according to her legal counsel, is not be affected by the issue.

"I am confident it will never affect her because the integrity and accuracy of the 2016 automated election system had been affirmed by the Supreme Court or PET when it dismissed Marcos' first cause of action assailing integrity of the system," said Robredo's lawyer Romulo Macalintal.

Marcos, son of the late President Ferdinand Marcos, lost to Robredo by 263,473 votes which the former senator claimed was marred by fraud. Marcos has challeged Robredo's victory before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal.

The Commission on Elections (Comelec), for its part, vowed to conduct probe on the alleged poll irregularities.

According to James Jimenez, Comelec spokesperson, the "early transmission" mentioned by Sotto may be the transmission test that is part of the poll body's standard procedure.

"It's in that period kung saan lumapag iyong makina sa paggagamitan at sinubukan bago selyuhan para gamitin on election day. Like I said, all the way up to the wee hours of election day, there were some areas na naghahabol," he said. —Anna Felicia Bajo/KBK, GMA News