By Beting Laygo Dolor, Contributing Editor
A former Cabinet secretary’s campaign to show proof of what he calls massive cheating in the 2022 presidential elections moved forward last week when a bill was set in the House of Representatives seeking a probe over his claims.
The proposed probe is being called by the House minority, comprised mostly of a handful of progressive party-list groups led by Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) which includes Gabriela and Kabataan, and lawmakers from dwindling political parties, notably the Liberal Party.
While admitting that it would be a longshot for a full-scale probe, the fact that a minority of lawmakers made headway with the proof by the “TNTrio” was victory enough.
The trio is comprised of Eliseo Rio (former secretary of the Department of Information and Communications Technology during the Duterte administration), along with Augusto Lagman (former head of the National Movement for Free Elections as well as the Philippine Computer Society) and Franklin Isaac (former head of the Financial Executives of the Philippines).
They had been waging a lonely, uphill battle to prove their claim that the victory of Ferdinand Marcos Jr over Leni Robredo was due to massive cheating done electronically.
However, getting Congress to study their proof will be difficult as the overwhelming majority of congressmen and senators of the country’s bicameral Congress are allied with Marcos.
But on the plus side, there’s a growing number of media personalities whose opinion pieces support the TNTrio claims, such as Jarius Bondoc of the Philippine Star, Ma. Ceres Doyo of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and the entire Rappler organization. Also, before he was assassinated last year, broadcaster Percy Lapid frequently spoke against the alleged election fraud.
Last year, the trio asked the Supreme Court to file a civil action known as mandamus to instruct the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to preserve all data records and transmission logs supporting the 2022 election vote count.
Last month, former Negros Oriental governor Rafael Cosculluela backed the trio’s call for full disclosure, otherwise “they deserve nothing less than impeachment.”
The mere fact that Comelec refuses to open their transmission logs makes the poll body “highly suspect,” he said.
TNTrio is hoping that the House of Representatives will at least acknowledge the data they will provide, as the lawmakers may be the last hope of getting to the bottom of the alleged rigged elections.
The Comelec, however, is currently headed by the former election lawyer of Marcos in his losing case against Robredo, who defeated him in the vice-presidential elections of 2016.
The TNTrio is focusing their accusations on two items:
One, is the “mysterious” IP 192.168.0.2, which techies point out is a little known private internet protocol address through which millions of votes passed in the 2022 polls. Ordinarily, the big three telcos – PLDT/Smart, Globe Telecom, and DITO Telecommunity – would have handled the task as a guarantee against cheating. Instead, the little-known middle man IPO was used by the Comelec.
Secondly, the TNTrio has been calling for the transmission logs which should show where all the votes came from, down to the precinct level.
Comelec chief George Garcia has promised to provide Rios with the logs but instead provided the group the reception logs, which prove nothing but only raised doubts on the possible culpability of the poll body in the supposed cheating.
What remains questionable is how more than 30 million votes had been tabulated within the first hour after polling places closed, which Rio insists is a physical impossibility. Ordinarily, it would have taken days before that many votes could be counted.
Rio says they are not questioning the possibility that Marcos won fair and square but that all questions regarding that victory should be answered.
