The People’s Movement Against Poverty strongly condemned Mayor Alfredo Lim’s exposed plan to manipulate the results of the May 10 elections to ensure the victory of Noynoy Aquino and Mar Roxas, his party’s candidates for president and vice president, respectively.
According to PMAP president Ronald Lumbao, Ronilda Reluya’s testimony that she saw how the fake election returns containing Precinct Count Optical Scanner (PCOS) machine numbers and number of votes for national and local candidates were being prepared at the Electronic Data Processing (EDP) unit inside the Office of the Mayor and in front of EDP chief Edgardo Tan is well founded.The fake election results supposedly from Manila’s Tondo district show landslide victory for Lim, his relatives including his son and his grandson who are running for councilor in the first district, and the entire Noynoy-Mar ticket.The documents also indicate the number of PCOS machines, a detail which supposedly known only to the Comelec prior to the election day.
Lumbao said that there is clearly a connivance between some Comelec officials and Mayor Lim to electronically sabotage the election results in Manila in favor of Liberal Party candidates.“The local Comelec in Manila has a new Garci in them that is ensuring the victory of Lim and Noynoy. He added that Manilans should be alarmed and vigilant over attempts by Lim’s camp to thwart the popular will of the people by cheating using the power of money and some people in the government.“If this form of cheating can be done in Manila by no less than the city mayor, this can also be possible in other cities and provinces in the country just to ensure the victory of Noynoy and Mar. And the hello Garci scandal will most likely happen again,” Lumbao said.
This Lim-led electronic cheating in Manila, together with Noynoy’s earlier pronouncement that he will not accept an election result that will not proclaim him a winner as well as the persistent calls of the Makati Business Club-led Namfrel for a parallel quick count, could well be seen now as a grand plan to ensure the return to power of the ruling elite.“We join Mayor Lito Atienza’s appeal to the Comelec to disqualify Lim following his attempt to rig the elections using government funds. He has no right to be elected because he will surely rob the coffers of the City when given the chance, as he already did,” Lumbao said.
Lumbao also said that he finds logic in Atienza’s call to put Manila under Comelec control and to deputize the AFP to secure the elections instead of using the police, who are obviously loyal to Lim. Along with thousands of their supporters, Atienza’s entire “Buhayin ang Maynila” team also held a prayer rally for honest, orderly, peaceful and credible elections in front of the Manila Cathedral yesterday morning.
