Comelec urged to appoint one representative for all legislative hearings

The Legal Network for Truthful Elections (LENTE) on Tuesday urged the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to appoint a single representative who will attend all legislative hearings.

“Hopefully, in three or six years, we’d see a permanent person to always be the one attending the legislative hearings,” LENTE Executive Director Ona Caritos said during a seminar on the Comelec’s assessment of the elections.

Caritos said this is especially important for hearings on proposed bills such as changes to the Omnibus Election Code or to overseas absentee voting.

“If there’s a permanent legislative person assigned by Comelec to attend these congressional hearings, then we could focus more on the passage of a new Omnibus Election Code, which would probably address our problems on vote-buying, misinformation, disinformation, our antiquated finance laws on spending… and we need to have a contribution limit,” Caritos said.

Meanwhile, the LENTE executive director also said they wanted the Comelec Task Force Kontra Bigay and the Task Force Kontra Fake News to continue.

Vote-buying

For his part, Comelec Chairman George Garcia said they were seeking to revive the Comelec and the Department of Justice (DOJ) joint panel.

“The Comelec will be conducting the preliminary investigation and we would refer to DOJ ‘yung prosecution,” he explained.

Garcia said legislation and coordination between agencies was needed.

“This is not an excuse but this is a call for action that there must be an immediate legislation, if it is possible, and number two that there will be a coordinative effort between the agencies of government,” he added.

Garcia also wanted Section 261 of the Omnibus Election Code, which tackles vote-buying, redefined.

“‘Yung mga makabagong pamimili using PayMaya, using cellphone, maaring makaligtas sila sa definition ng 261 kasi sasabihin hindi naman covered ‘yan,” Garcia said.

He said it may also be time to increase the penalty for vote-buying.

“Maliban sa sabi nila, sabi ng isang congressman life imprisonment tapos may perpetual disqualification to hold public office,” he said.

Furthermore, Garcia wanted to penalize politicians who facilitated vote buying.

“‘Yan bang pamimili ng boto, pwede namin ma-attribute ‘yung conspiracy… hindi naman kalimitan politiko ang namimigay ng pera. Minsan po at malimit, kasabay doon sa activity nila, sinasabay pero malayo,” he said.

“So paano natin mare-relate o maco-connect ‘yung pamimili doon sa politician. The most na prosecute natin ‘yung mismong nagbibigay ng pera na tao lang niya. Hindi ‘yung politician himself,” he added.

He stressed that the evidence gathered against individuals buying votes was credible, admissible, and would stand scrutiny.

“Take note, to convict an accused, you need evidence of guilty beyond reasonable doubt. A hint of doubt will exculpate this accused kaya makakaligtas at makakaligtas,” he said.

Telcos

Meanwhile, Garcia said he would look into contracts with telecommunication companies to see if they can provide their call detail records.

Garcia issued the remark after former Information and Communications Undsercertary Eliseo Rio asked if telcos can corroborate from their call detail records that their networks peaked transmitting data from VCMs to transparency servers on the first hour of counting results of the 2022 elections.

Rio said that the Comelec transparency servers reached a peak count of more than 20 billion votes. He said the counts “drastically went down” on the second hour to only 13.2 million votes.

“I will try to look into the contract with the telcos if we can compel, and I will commit to that, we can compel the telcos to give to us, definitely they can give to us, they should give to us, the transmission, the logs,” Garcia said.

“We will make that public… we will make that available to you so that you can by yourself— ‘yung concern niyo sir na concern din ni Usec. ay ma-test natin,” he added. — DVM, GMA News