THE Commmission on Elections (Comelec) has prohibited its service provider for the Secure Electronic Transmission Services (SETS) from establishing communication lines with political parties and candidates in the forthcoming May 2025 national and local polls.
The poll body set down the prohibition in its contract with the joint venture of IOne Resources Inc. and Ardent Networks Inc. for the SETS project that was signed last week.
“(The provider shall) not receive any communication and/or make any direct or indirect contact with any political party, candidate, partisan organization, or group at any given time with respect to the SETS project for the duration of this contract,” the agreement stated.
“This provision covers but is not limited to the provider’s officials, agents, employees, representatives, and agents,” it added.
The pact provides that communications with said entities may only be allowed on a very limited scope, such as “to present technical demonstrations or as may be authorized by Comelec. “
The provision is similar to the reminder of the Comelec to its service provider for the Full Automation System with Transparency Audit and Count (FASTrAC) project, which is the joint venture of Miru Systems Co Ltd, Integrated Computer Systems, St. Timothy Construction Corporation, and Centerpoint Solutions Technologies, Inc. (MIRU-ICS-STCC-CPSTI).
Comelec chairman George Garcia previously told the Miru Systems it should reject offers from politicians, political parties, and others, if any, asking them to rig the election results in their favor.
“Don’t do it under the present leadership of this Commission,” Garcia then warned Miru Systems.
To recall, the IOne-Ardent joint venture won the public bidding for the SETS project for an amount of P1,426,000,348.00.
To note, the SETS will be used to transmit the May 2025 election results using telecommunication networks.
The service contract also requires the IOne-Ardent joint venture to fully turnover all transmission logs related to the forthcoming polls.
“The provider shall turnover to Comelec all logs, with documentation, from all servers, such as but not limited to DNS servers and logs from firewall, routers, load balancers, switches, modems, and satellite equipment that were used during transmission,” it said.
“The provider, with the assistance of the Comelec, shall also require the telecommunication companies to turnover to the Comelec the logs related to elections from their servers that were used during the transmission,” it added.
The transmission logs during the 2022 elections have been the subject of continued questioning by retired colonel Leonardo Odoño and retired general Eliseo Rio, who insist that the transmission logs would prove their claims that there were poll irregularities in the last presidential elections.
The Comelec has since uploaded the May 2022 transmission logs in on its website.
