Despite relentless harassments and vilification by the military and police throughout the campaign period up to election day last May 13, the progressive parties amassed a total of 2,236,155 votes that is good for six seats in the 18th Congress.
“How can I concede to a rotten electoral exercise that has basically deceived, bribed, intimidated and manipulated our people into electing the worst kinds of leaders imaginable? I cannot,” he said.
“Despite many reports of fraud, the Rodrigo Duterte regime cannot defeat the people’s will,” BM second nominee Ferdinand Gaite told Kodao.
Kontra Daya reported more than 288 incidents of vote counting machine (VCM) failures that were independently monitored and mapped by its volunteer network on the ground.
Volunteers on the ground described the vote buying as “widespread,” “massive,” “brazen,” and “insulting”, Kontra Daya said.
“Targeting progressive parties and candidates is a blatant disregard of the non partisan role of state forces during elections,” Kontra Daya convenor Giovanni Tapang said.
Danny Arao, Kontra Daya spokesperson, said the VRVM must be suspended as it causes unnecessary delays in the voting process. “We can afford to have it suspended because it is just pilot testing phase,” he said.
Five of the attacks happened after Kodao uploaded a news report on false claims by the Philippine National Police and Army reservists that Makabayan parties have been disqualified by the Commission on Elections.
The Facebook page of the Iloilo City Police Office and multiple Facebook accounts of Army reservists in Mindanao shared May 12 a post that falsely reported that the Commission on Elections has disqualified six partylist groups under the Makabayan bloc— Bayan Muna, Anakbayan, Anakpawis, ACT-Teachers, Gabriela and Anakbayan, poll fact checker Tsek.ph reported early Monday morning.
Dismissing Malacañang Palace’s new latest accusation, the NUJP said the new diagram is another badly-concocted fiction meant to scare the administration’s perceived enemies, including independent journalists.
