A GROUP of businessmen calling for a comprehensive review of the 2010 automated elections expressed support behind the move to investigate the 2007 senatorial elections saying the electorate deserves to know the true outcome of the Maguindanao votes.

“History should reflect the true sentiments of the people in the elections,” the group said in a press statement.

However, Bobby Hilado of Tanggulang Demokrasya said while issues of cheating during the 2004 and 2007 elections are being revived, a comprehensive review of the first automated elections in the country should also be conducted.

Hilado said the results of the 2010 national and local elections were also clouded by serious doubts owing to grave election law violations committed allegedly by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) plus the operational glitches in the automated system.

“While we hail the move to revisit the 2004 and 2007 elections, the review process should go beyond. The 2010 elections should also be scrutinized,” he said.

According to TanDem, the safeguards in the automated system used were illegally disregarded and election returns were deliberately left without signatures, opening the electoral process and results to fraud that undermined the legitimacy of the election results during the 2010 national and local elections.

Some of these are the suspension of the use of the digital signatures of the members of the Boards of Elections Inspectors (BEI) or the so-called signatures; the suspension of the use of the ultraviolet scanners, which are designed to authenticate the ballots being fed into the Precinct Court Optical Scan (PCOS) machine; the suspension of the PCOS function to show on the screen the voters’ ballots instead of merely the word “Congratulations;” the disregard of the law’s provision on “data retention,” when the Comelec destroyed memory cards and compact flash cards as early as May 15, 2010.

The group also questioned the uncompleted source code review and pretesting of the PCOS machines as specified in the law, the grossly defective implementation of the random manual count in blatant violation of the law in terms of accuracy, and the disfranchisement of an estimated 2 million to 8 million voters in the presidential, vice presidential and senatorial elections.

Several groups have raised these issues in questioning the legality of the 2010 automated elections but the Supreme Court has yet to act on any of the petitions. A team of election observers, organized by the Global Filipino Nation, including citizens from different countries, extensively observed the elections from close range in different provinces. In their report, they challenged the legitimacy of the election results.

Recently, the Supreme Court ordered the Comelec to compel Smartmatic-TIM, the owner of the PCOS machines that were used to count last year’s votes, to make public the source codes used to run and operate the counting machines.

Until now, the Comelec has yet to comply with the High Court’s order, stressing that Smartmatic owns the source codes and not the Philippine government.

Last year the Senate launched an investigation on how Smartmatic conducted the 2010 elections, but representatives of the company failed to provide a clear answer as they evaded pertinent questions on how the PCOS machines work.

The group is also batting for a citizen’s recount in the face of serious election law violations by Comelec and other operational glitches that put to serious doubt the credibility of the elections.

TanDem stressed that all Filipinos, who genuinely seek the truth behind electoral results, fully support a rectification of the 2004, 2007 and most especially 2010 elections as this will affect future elections.