THE Supreme Court said the oral arguments on the issuance of voter receipts set for Thursday will be limited to whether the Commission on Elections has enough time and whether the poll body can implement enough safeguards to comply with the court’s earlier order.
The SC said in an advisory that the Comelec and former senator Richard Gordon, who filed the petition calling for the issuance of receipts to voters in the May 9 elections, will each have 10 minutes to present their arguments, followed by the interpellations of the high court magistrates.
Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista said they are hoping they could physically demonstrate to the high court how the vote count machine to be used in the elections works and how much time it will take to print voter receipts as ordered by the SC in the writ of mandamus issued last March 8.
In its writ of mandamus, the SC unanimously voted to direct the Comelec to issue receipts to voters on Election Day to serve as the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail.
Bautista said they will bring two VCMs to show the magistrates the differences in printing voter’s receipts and flashing an onscreen verification.
Bautista reiterated that the Comelec is not against printing voter receipts per se, but the proximity of the May 9 polls makes it difficult to implement.
“Our lawyer will be Solicitor General Florin Hilbay. He will be the one presenting the case. I and Commissioner Christian Robert Lim, as head of the Steering Committee for the May 2016 elections, will also be there to answer questions,” Bautista said.
“What we intend to show to them tomorrow is our timeline. We are still discussing it in our meeting because we think it is important that we present every detail as well as the assumptions and risks, to the magistrates,” he said.
Bautista said the Comelec can defer action on its action plan until after the oral arguments, but stressed that the poll body has to know with finality by next week which path they should take.
Meanwhile, senatorial candidate and Leyte Rep. Martin Romualdez on Wednesday challenged Malacañang to make a stand on the Comelec’s statements toying with the idea of postponing the elections or holding manual elections.
Romualdez, president of the Philippine Constitution Association, urged Malacanang to “condemn in the strongest possible terms” the pronouncements made by Comelec because “these threaten the right of the electorate to choose its leaders.”
“It is the primary role of Malacanang to always assure the public that our democratic process is not threatened by the crucial pronouncements made by the Comelec,” Romualdez, who ran unopposed in the last congressional polls and a former chair of the House committee on ethics and privileges, stressed.
“I am disheartened by the Palace callous position despite the widespread public outrage against no-el [no election], ma-el [manual elections] and po-el [postponed elections],” Romualdez said.
