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Sunday, February 9, 2025

Comelec upholds alphabetical order for senatorial bets

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Saturday said it could not grant the request of former senator Kiko Pangilinan to  assign Subair Guinthum Mustapha the No. 67 or the last senatorial candidate on the ballot to save the poll body from additional printing costs.

Pangilinan told the Comelec that to spare other senatorial candidates from incurring additional expenses, he suggested that the Comelec give Mustapha the No. 67 or the last senatorial candidate on the ballot.

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The Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order against Mustapha’s disqualification, prompting the Comelec to suspend ballot printing to include his name.

With Mustapha’s addition, 20 candidates, including Pangilinan, will have their ballot numbers changed, necessitating the revision and reprinting of their election paraphernalia to reflect the updated numbers.

The former senator noted that many candidates have their posters and campaign materials with the assigned numbers printed and distributed across various parts of the country. Pangilinan’s name will be moved from No. 50 to 51 if the Comelec decides to insert Mustapha’s name alphabetically.

However, poll spokesperson Rex Laudiangco said the alphabetical arrangement of names in the ballots, which is based on the surname, is the most equitable and most objective order/sequence of candidates by which no particular person will be intentionally given premium and preference.

“Now, the reason for the High Court’s issuance of a TRO is to have candidate Mustapha be included in the said list of candidates and official ballots, and therefore, he must treated equally as with the other candidates, with the rules on said sequence/order being afforded also to him”, he said.

Laudiangco said that to put his name last on the list would go against fairplay and equality of treatment.

Additionally, the inclusion of the names of 1 national candidate and 7 local candidates would still require the reprinting of ballots given the change/amendment in the Automated Elections System, particularly on the Election Management System, the Automated Counting Machine, and Consolidation and Cavassing System, including the Online Voting and Counting System.

‘In other words, a change or amendment in these systems necessitates a corresponding regeneration of new ballot faces and reserialization of ballots, and the corresponding reprinting of Ballots”, Laudiangco added.

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