The Commission on Elections turned the tables on its critics yesterday, accusing a cyber-savvy group of padding the list of online signatories calling for the resignation of Comelec commissioners.
The Comelec, which has been accused of vote padding and shaving in the past, said the Information Technology Foundation of the Philippines (ITFP) was rigging its count of those who are opposed to the commission.
"Ironically, the very petition that denounces the Comelec is, itself, guilty of unbridled dagdag with no means to bawas fictional signatures by fictional characters," the Comelec said in a statement posted on its website.
According to the Comelec, duplicate names and e-mail addresses of the signatories pop up several times, which was apparently done by the ITFP to "bloat" the signature count.
The Comelec also accused the ITFP of including fictional characters in the list of online signatories and of dragging overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) into the fray without their consent or knowledge.
"The petition can easily become a tool of pure propaganda; and now, even overseas Filipino workers are being roped, quite possibly without their knowledge or consent, into this three-ring circus. It would be funny if it weren’t so tasteless," the Comelec statement said.
The poll body pointed out that any person can have an e-mail address in less than fifteen minutes and can have as many different e-mail addresses as he wants, and can therefore "sign" the petition more than once.
"Since the petition is online and available to anyone worldwide, and there is no way to verify the signatory’s nationality, a person can pretend to be Filipino, or even more crassly, pretend to be an overseas Filipino worker. Literally anyone can sign up; even Canadians," the Comelec added.
The Comelec further noted that the petition does not even distinguish between signatures that support its cause, and those that don’t because it includes signatures that slam the petition but were nevertheless counted as supporters.
Late last year, the ITFP mounted an online signature campaign in a bid to pressure all Comelec commissioners involved in the alleged vote-counting machine scam to resign immediately.
Close to 1,000 people, mostly OFWs, have so far signed the petition three weeks after ITFP posted the online campaign.