FORTY days to go, the citizens' arms/election watchdogs (CA/WD), including the Automated Election System (AES) Watch, are yet to see the technical evaluation committee's (TEC) certification for all the six documented results stipulated in Section 11 of Republic Act (RA) 9369 or AES Law (see details at https://www.manilatimes.net/2022/03/09/opinion/columns/transparency-under-siege/1835604). This issue was raised during the "Election Day End-To-End Demo" held on March 22 in a hotel in Manila; Comelec replied with no definite date as to when the TEC will release these results in spite of the deadline set by the AES Law (i.e., February 9 — three months before the May 9 elections).

To date, in spite of Comelec's non-promulgation of the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) of RA 9369 for the past 2.5 decades, they have been arguing that the general instructions (GIs) that they promulgated every NLE are equivalent to the IRR. Be that as it may, the CA/WD still foresees more relevant general instructions (GIs) that are yet to be prepared despite 40 days left before the national and local elections (NLE). It was noted that there are GIs related to the voting and counting at the precincts; canvassing at the municipal, city, district and provincial levels; final testing and sealing (FTS); contingency measures; conduct of verification and certification of election day computerized voters list (EDCVLs) and posted computerized voters list (PCVLs); local source code review; and random manual audit.

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