Abalos chides Namfrel over 8-2-2 GO win projection

06/05/2007 | 07:48 AM

Commission on Elections (Comelec) chairman Benjamin Abalos Sr chided the National Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) Tuesday for making projections about an 8-2-2 opposition win in the senatorial race.

Abalos "reminded" Namfrel that its job is merely to conduct quick-count operations of the election based on its copies of election documents, and not to "extrapolate."

"I hope they stop issuing that kind of statement. Sila ay nandiyan para mag-quick count lang, di mag-extrapolate. Kung naging 8-3-1 baka mamaya masira sila, hindi maganda yan. Baka maging 7-3-2 ibig sabihin may himalang ginawa ang Comelec (I hope they stop issuing that kind of statement. Namfrel is there just to conduct a quick count, not to interpret the data. If the final count turns out to be 8-3-1, their credibility may suffer. Or if it turns out to be 7-3-2, we will be accused of hocus-pocus)," he said in an interview on dzXL radio.

He said there are still some 1.2 million votes yet to be counted, and the vote difference among those in the 12th to 13th places may be between 28,000 to 30,000.

But Namfrel chairman Edward Go said his group never said its figures were "certain."

Go said he merely said that Juan Miguel Zubiri (Team Unity) can still mathematically catch up with Aquilino "Koko" Pimentel III (Genuine Opposition), with a difference of just 171,000 votes.

In contrast, he said Zubiri has little, if any, chance of catching up with former Navy Lt. S.G. Antonio Trillanes IV (GO).

"It doesn't mean to say the final result 100%, ang counting natin hindi official (It does not mean our counting is 100% the final result. Besides, our counting is not official)," he said in a separate interview. - GMANews.TV