Election lawyer Romulo Macalintal said on Wednesday, Jan. 26 that if the Commission on Elections (Comelec) could "brag" that it started printing the May 2022 ballots "way earlier" than the May 2019 polls, then there is no reason why it could not get clarification from the Supreme Court regarding two aspirants who secured Temporary Restraining Orders (TROs).
"The Comelec has all the time to seek such clarification from the SC and advise the court of its plan to start printing the ballots instead of just saying that 'the ballots are ready to go, so we went ahead' which practically ignored the restraining orders of the court," Macalintal said in a statement.
He mentioned that the Comelec even "bragged" that the ballot printing for the May 2022 elections “started way earlier” than the May 2019 elections wherein ballot printing started on February 9, 2019 and finished on April 26, 2019, way way ahead of the May 13, 2019 elections.
He said that the poll body should immediately stop printing the official ballots to be used in the May 9, 2022 elections.
Macalintal explained that this should be done until such time that the poll body receives clearance or clarification from the Supreme Court (SC) on the status of various election cases where it was stopped from enforcing its decision disqualifying some candidates and rejecting petition for registration of party-list groups in said elections
The National Printing Office has begun printing the ballots that will be used for the May 2022 polls on Sunday, Jan. 23. In the ballot face Comelec released, the names of vice-presidential aspirant Wilson Amad and senatorial aspirant Normal Marquez names were not included.
Both of them, who have been declared nuisance candidates, have secured temporary restraining orders (TROs) from the SC before the printing of the ballots. In the SC TRO issued for Marquez, the high court ordered the Comelec to stop implementing its decision on his case and directed the poll body to comment on his petition within a non-extendible period of 10 days. Despite the said TRO, his name was not included in the ballot
The veteran poll lawyer cited Comelec spokesman James Jimenez statement in which he stated that “by the time the TROs came out, the serializations of the ballots had already been completed, so the ballots were ready to go, so we went ahead.”
In Marquez' letter to SC Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo, Marquez called Comelec’s action as an “arrogant defiance” of the SC TRO.
"Indeed, Comelec should have first advised the SC that it could no longer obey its restraining order before it started printing the ballots and should have asked for authority from the SC to proceed with the printing of the ballots despite the existence of said TROs on certain candidates," Macalintal said.
Jimenez on the other hand, mentioned that it's still early in the printing process and that the commission can very certainly order a reprinting of some of the ballots.
"Well, I just like to point out. I don't want to argue with Atty. Mac. I would just have to point out that this is a presidential elections and 2019 was a senatorial elections so it is a little more complicated this time. And we are also talking about more voters this time which means you have a lot more allocations to handle," he said.
He added that most of what was printed were manual ballots which means there are no names. While the ballots with printed names were just for BARMM which is just around 165,000. Jimenez mentioned that he hopes matters will be resolved.