MANILA: The Supreme Court (SC) has directed the Commission on Elections (Comelec) en banc and Miru Systems Co. to file a comment on a petition questioning the PHP17.9-billion contract to automate next year’s national and local elections.
In a statement Monday, the tribunal said the poll body and the joint venture of Miru Systems Co. Ltd., Integrated Computer Systems, St. Timothy Construction Corporation and Centerpoint Solutions Technologies, Inc. must comment on the ‘Petition and Application for Temporary Restraining Order and/or Writ of Preliminary Injunction’ filed by former Caloocan City 2nd District congressman Edgar Erice.
In his petition filed April 18, Erice claimed that the contract violates Republic Act (RA) 9369, or the Election Automation Law, as the voting machine presented by Miru was only a prototype.
Republic Act 9369 explicitly requires that ‘the system procured must have demonstrated capability and been successfully used in a prior electoral exercise here or abroad.’
Erice said the Miru
contract will ‘endanger the orderly conduct of the 2025 elections’ and is ‘highly anomalous and overpriced.’
Comelec and Miru signed the 2025 automated election system service contract on March 11.
Erice’s petition comes on the heels of the SC decision in the petition of Smartmatic TIM Corporation and Smartmatic Philippines, Inc. against the poll body where the high court reversed the Comelec ruling to disqualify Smartmatic from participating in the public bidding for the 2025 midterm polls.
While the SC ruled that the Comelec en banc implemented a discretionary pre-qualification regime that amounts to grave abuse of discretion, or lack or excess of jurisdiction, and that Smartmatic was thusly wrongly disqualified, the court cited considerations of equity, justice, and practicality, as well as the doctrine of operative fact, to hold that its findings will not affect the 2025 polls.
The Comelec, meanwhile, said it would “file the comment accordingly.”
In the meantime, poll body chief George Erwin Garcia s
aid they continue to prepare for next year’s midterm polls.
“We are so elated that the High Court did not issue any injunctive writ. Thus, our preparations for the automated 2025 national and local elections will proceed as scheduled in view of a very tight timeline that we have,” he said in a brief statement.
Source: Philippines News Agency
