Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Saidamen Pangarungan on Wednesday, March 23, said the poll body is fully committed to a full and complete transparency of the entire election process.

He issued the statement in reaction to the petition for mandamus filed by the National Press Club before the Supreme Court seeking to compel Comelec to make transparent its preparations for the elections.

Pangarungan said it is incumbent upon the Comelec to be transparent in the preparations and conduct of the elections.

"This is why, after I assumed as Chairman I ordered to the persons involved in the preparations to allow observers, watchers and live streaming of all the activities without however compromising the security of accountable documents as well as the Comelec system," he said.

He said they already opened for public viewing the Sta. Rosa Comelec warehouse in Laguna where the SD cards are being configured and National Printing Office where the official ballots are being printed to different stakeholders including but not limited to political parties and the media.

On Thursday, Pangarungan said, they are going to the National Printing Office again and the Pasig warehouse together with stakeholders for the random sampling and inspection of printed official ballots.

Meanwhile, poll lawyer Romulo Macalintal asked the Comelec to issue the guidelines for the random sampling it will conduct.

He said since he was the one who suggested the random sampling of the ballots which were printed without the presence of the parties and candidates, “we should be properly notified of the conduct of the said random sampling and the guidelines thereof.”

Macalintal said he wrote the Comelec as a concerned citizen and election law practitioner.

The poll lawyer earlier told the Comelec to first address some concerns before burning the 105,000 defective ballots such as how many rolls of ballot paper were actually purchased by the Comelec for the May 2022 elections.

Macalintal pointed out that as per the bidding invitation of the Comelec for suppliers of the ballot paper, “a total of 2,680 rolls of ballot papers were opened for bidding.”

He asked the Comelec for an inventory of these ballot paper.

Macalintal also asked the Comelec “if there were unused ballot paper in the May 2019 elections and if the same were used for purposes of the May 2022 elections; and, if so, if these unused ballot paper for the May 2019 polls were used in printing some official ballots for the May 2022 elections.”