| A Challenge to NAMFREL |
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| Monday, 30 August 2004 | ||||||
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Roberto Verzola is a pioneer in the local computer industry. He designed and built a microcomputer in 1982, and set up the first online system at the Senate and the House of Representatives in 1991, as well as the first online system used by BusinessWorld for its reporters. This piece was published in the Yellow Pad column of Business World, 30 August 2004 Edition. This essay follows up an earlier piece, published in a national daily (20 June 2004), which exposed the major discrepancies between the NAMFREL and Congress tallies as well as NAMFREL's selective tabulation in favor of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. I released a more complete analysis of the Congress and NAMFREL tallies on 14 August 2004, which was cited in several news stories, columns and even editorials. Trying to reach NAMFREL officials Before releasing my final report, I had written to NAMFREL Chair Jose Concepcion, Jr. (three letters in all) and Secretary-general Guillermo Luz (two letters and several follow-up phone calls) in July, informing them of my findings and asking for a meeting to discuss these findings with them and their technical people. I managed to reach Mr. Concepcion by phone, but he referred me to Mr. Luz. I also talked to two other NAMFREL officials, a former cabinet secretary and a bishop, asking to present my case. Both did not want to see it, and told me to see Mr. Luz. Mr. Luz, however, would not even talk to me on the phone. Through his secretary, I asked Mr. Luz several times for at least a written reply to my letters (a request I also made in writing). As of today, I haven't gotten any. I do not know if Mr. Concepcion or Mr. Luz ever responded via the media, because I do not monitor every newspaper or radio/TV program. But I have neither read nor heard any response, nor has any NAMFREL official contacted me at all. The case against NAMFREL First, a definition of terms: "total votes" is the sum of all votes for president; "GMA lead" is the votes for Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo minus the votes for Fernando Poe, Jr. or PJ (a negative lead means an FPJ lead); "GMA margin" is the GMA lead as percentage of the total votes; "discrepancy" is the GMA margin under Congress minus the GMA margin under NAMFREL. Let me reiterate my case against NAMFREL. Congress says GMA won by 1.1 million. The NAMFREL data clearly showed major discrepancies between its presidential tally and that of Congress. The discrepancies were largest in ARMM (50.5%), Central Mindanao (13.5%), CAR (4.1%), Northern Mindanao (3.9%) and Western Mindanao (3.9%). Among provinces, the provinces with the widest discrepancies were Basilan (75.1%), Sultan Kudarat (65.4%), Lanao del Sur (58.0%) and Sulu (41.3%), where FPJ won under the NAMFREL count but where GMA won under the Congress canvass. The discrepancies mean that GMA could not have won by 1.1 million, if we take NAMFREL's tally to be closer to the truth. I believe it is, for three reasons: a) it is based on precinct election returns, and did not pass through the hands of municipal and provincial cheats; b) the cheats would probably concentrate on the official (Congress) rather than the unofficial (NAMFREL) count; and c) teachers and volunteers tabulating precinct election returns (ERs) in full public view are more credible than provincial COMELEC officials preparing certificates of canvass (COCs). In its Terminal Report, NAMFREL was completely silent about these discrepancies. Why? NAMFREL showed GMA leading by around 681,000. However, an analysis of the NAMFREL tally will reveal a demonstrable pattern of selective tabulation. In essence, pro-GMA regions were counted ahead of pro-FPJ regions, creating a skew, i.e., an artificially high lead, in favor of GMA. The skew was worst on the sixth day (NAMFREL Reports 39-44), and persisted up to the Terminal Report (No. 83). Because of the selective tabulation, more FPJ votes remained uncounted than GMA votes. Thus, the true results should show a GMA lead that is definitely less than 681,000 votes. My analysis demonstrated this selective tabulation in five different ways: a) as percentage of their final votes, GMA votes were counted faster than FPJ votes; b) the tally was more nearly complete in GMA areas than in FPJ areas; c) of the 5.1 million votes that NAMFREL did not count, 4 million were from FPJ areas and only 1.1 million from GMA areas (in Metro Manila alone, an FPJ area, NAMFREL did not count around a million votes!); d) if we split the reports into two and tally the first and second halves separately, GMA leads the first half and FPJ the second half, showing the early tally of GMA votes and the late tally of FPJ votes; e) tabulating Reports 1-82 in reverse (i.e., last report first, first report last) results in an FPJ lead in Reports 82-40 and a GMA lead in Reports 39-1, showing clearly the clustering of FPJ votes at the latter part of the tally and of GMA votes at the earlier part of the tally. NAMFREL officials did not release a final breakdown of the precincts they have tallied (or not tallied) per region or province, despite the requirement in its COMELEC accreditation that it should do so. In fact, such a report should have been part of its system design from the beginning. Absence of this information masks the pro-GMA skew by making it difficult to estimate the voting turnout and the progress of the tally per region or province. I estimated the information from NAMFREL's Report No. 73, the last report that contained such a breakdown, allowing the computation of the average vote turnout per precinct in each region. Releasing this information would have enabled independent analysts to estimate very closely the true results of the elections. Who won? I have been asked: Do you realize what you are doing? Do you want another actor for president? This matter of whom we want for president was the central issue before the elections. But after the last vote was cast, the only relevant issue is: What was the result of the voting? That is what has been guiding me: the search for the true results of the 2004 presidential elections. Fortunately, although the NAMFREL tally was skewed in favor of GMA, much of the skew could be corrected. By using the final 1.5 million votes counted in NAMFREL's Terminal Report as a representative sample for the uncounted votes (6.6 million before the Terminal Report, 5.1 million after the report), we can estimate how these uncounted votes went. And I found out that FPJ's lead in the uncounted votes was enough to erase GMA's lead overall. It was a very close contest indeed, perhaps a dead-heat. The results came out as a range: a GMA lead from 156,000 to -84,000. The final numbers may vary by a few tens of thousands up or down, reflecting the uncertainties inherent in the assumptions I was making. Conclusions But the data unmistakably lead to the following conclusions, that:
If NAMFREL releases this breakdown, we might be able to narrow down the probable range even further and get closer to the truth. I can sit down with any NAMFREL official or technical person to explain my analysis, to show them the demonstrable pro-GMA bias in the NAMFREL tally. I am willing to face any NAMFREL official in a public forum to discuss this issue. If they have any sense of public accountability at all, they cannot ignore this challenge. Those who want the full data set of the Congress and NAMFREL results can get them freely from www.abrenian.com or buy the data CD at cost ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or 0919-608-7073).
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