THE Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a petition assailing the validity of the P6.2-billion contract awarded by the Commission on Elections to the Smartmatic consortium for the lease of optical mark readers that were used in the May 9 elections.
The petition was filed last year by taxpayers Francisco Aguilar Jr. and Guillermo Santos, but the high court dismissed it for being moot and academic, spokesman Theodore Te said.
“Considering that the elections have already been concluded and the OMR machines have been utilized nationwide, any resolution of the Court with regard to the implementation of Comelec Resolution 9980 will serve no substantive relief to the parties, nor will it have any practical or legal value to the Bench and the Bar,” Te said.
The petitioners had urged the high court to void the resolution, accusing the poll body of committing grave abuse of discretion in approving the deal that they said was “illegal, irregular or unnecessary expenditures to the detriment of the government.”
Aguilar was a member of the International Observer Team on the implementation of the first nationwide automated elections in 2010. Santos is president and chief executive of the Center for Philippine Futuristic Studies and Management.
They claimed that the lease of new OMRs would be unnecessary because the old precinct count optical scan machines that were used in the previous elections could still be used once refurbished.
Last week, the high court also dumped the petition of the watchdog group Center for People Empowerment in Governance questioning the earlier parallel biddings conducted by the Comelec for the refurbishment of the Precinct Count Optical Scan machines and the lease of new OMR units.