ROXAS: RANDOM MANUAL AUDIT A DAY
AFTER POLLS TO STOP CHEATING

Liberal Party President and Vice Presidential race frontrunner Senator Mar Roxas II today stressed that the random manual audit of voting precincts nationwide should be done a day after the May 10 national elections.

"Aanhin mo pa ang damo kung patay na yung kabayo? (It would already be too late)," Roxas said if the random manual audit will not be held right after the automated polls close on May 10, it will fuel people's fears of cheating and manipulation of the results of the first-ever automated elections in the country.

"Our party will insist that there will be a manual audit immediately after the polls. There should be a manual audit the next day, not two weeks after," to prevent fraud operators from tampering with the results of the elections from the 1,145 clustered precincts nationwide, Roxas stressed.

The Commission on Elections has already released guidelines as to the conduct of the random manual audit in 1.5% of the 76,340 clustered precincts, or five clustered precincts for each congressional district. The Comelec also approved the recommendation to conduct the random manual audit "immediately after" the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines complete their functions.

The Comelec had earlier rejected calls for a parallel manual canvassing of poll results, saying it is no longer necessary since a random manual audit is enough to do the job. But if the manual audit would be carried out not the day after the elections at the earliest, there is resurgent fear the results could already be tampered in the meantime.

Despite these fears of failure or rigging of elections, Roxas remains optimistic that the voters themselves will not allow themselves to be disenfranchised, noting that a recent Social Weathers Survey shows that one of four voters intend to watch vote-counting, while one in five plan to join organizations for orderly and clean elections.

"Maging mapagmatyag tayong lahat nang masiguro nating mabibilang nang tama ang ating mga boto. Magtulong-tulong tayong siguruhing hindi magtatagumpany ang sinumang nagnanais na dayain ang eleksyong ito (Let us all remain vigilant. Let us work together to ensure that our votes are counted and to stop anyone from cheating the results)," he stressed.

Liberal standard-bearer Senator Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III and his vice-presidential candidate Roxas have consistently topped pre-election surveys; but the tandem is not letting their guards down and are now focusing on firming up their volunteers for vote protection work.