A Commission on Elections (Comelec) official blamed Smartmatic on Wednesday for its failure to complete the purging of double voter listings in Davao City and Davao del Sur.

Lawyer Ma. Febes Barlaan, provincial election officer of Davao City and Davao del Sur, said that prior to the discovery of double registrants the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), the Comelec had already started deleting the double registrants but Smartmatic allegedly ordered them to stop.

“We started deleting the names in our computer since December last year but we were ordered to stop because Smartmatic wanted to determine the number of voters and the allocation of official ballots. But this does not mean we will no longer delete the names. We will do it manually instead,” she said.

Barlaan said failing to delete the double registrants was due to time constraint. “If we were given the time, we could have deleted all of the names but with the order, we are forced now to do it manually so that it will be noted once we give the teachers the list of final voters,” she said.

Others in the list are those who had requested for transfer, Barlaan added.

Among the names which appeared in the list were Pastor Apollo Quiboloy, a known religious leader here, who was registered in the first district and second district. While Quiboloy registered in the first district in 1997, he transferred to the second district in 2003.

Also in the list was Sebastian Duterte, the son of Mayor Rodrigo Duterte.

However, the mayor stressed that his son legally transferred residence.

Barlaan assured that the said double registrants can only vote in the place where they transferred.

Despite this, Lakas-Kampi-CMD senatorial bet Silvestre “Bebot” Bello still called on the Comelec to conduct an immediate purge of the voters’ list to protect the integrity of the country’s first automated polls.

Earlier reports said the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) discovered the existence of some 40,000 zombie voters as well as double and multiple registrants posted in the computerized voters’ list of the local Comelec offices in Davao and Davao del Sur.

Retired Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz said that he received the same information on the padded voters’ list from the two areas from a former Comelec commissioner whom he declined to identify.

A former justice secretary who served under the governments then President Corazon Aquino and later, then President Fidel Ramos, Bello said that unless the Comelec acts on cleansing the voters’ list of these zombie voters, the results of the automated polls would be questioned and there would be a credibility problem on the automated electoral process.

“If there are already irregularities in the voters’ registration, we cannot help but think that even with the use of these modern PCOS machines, cheating is possible. We must remember that this list is a vital part of the elections so the Comelec must make sure that it is cleared of anomaly,” Bello emphasized.