MANAMA – In compliance with COMELEC Resolution No. 10751, the Special Board of Election Inspectors (SBEIs) of the Philippine Embassy in the Kingdom of Bahrain conducted its Final Testing and Sealing (FTS) of the Vote Counting Machines (VCMs) at the Embassy lobby on 02 April 2022. The FTS was conducted to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the VCMs to be used in the upcoming National Elections.
The FTS procedure, which started from 1:00PM and ended at 10:30PM, was performed in order to prepare the VCMs for the actual Overseas Voting period which will start on 10 April 2022, 8:00AM (Bahrain time) and will end on 09 May 2022, 2:00PM, Bahrain time or 7:00PM Philippine time.
Philippine Chargé d’ Affaires a.i. to Bahrain Maria Paz G. Cortes welcomed and thanked the members of the Filipino community in the Kingdom of Bahrain who participated and observed the FTS procedure. CDA Cortes mentioned the importance of the activity towards ensuring a secure, accurate, free and fair elections and urged the community to spread the word and help the Embassy in its efforts to encourage more Filipinos to participate in this democratic electoral process. Consul Bryan Jess T. Baguio provided the general information and guidelines to be observed during the month-long election period and provided a walk-through of the actual FTS procedure.
Both VCMs and all SD cards that were tested functioned properly as expected. The Election Returns (ERs) of the SD cards used during the FTS provided accurate results when counterchecked through manual counting of the sample ballots that were fed by the members of the Filipino community in the two VCMs.
Source: Republic of Philippines Department Of Foreign Affairs