Government lawyers have asked the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to rescind the poll body’s memorandum of agreement (MOA) with news outfit Rappler on the provision of “fact-checking, poll-related content production, and voter awareness promotion during the election season.”

The Office of the Solicitor General (OSG), the government’s law firm, gave the Comelec until March 4 to rescind the MOA which the poll body signed with Rappler last Feb. 24.

If not rescinded, it said: “The OSG, as the People’s lawyer, may have to file the necessary case in court to declare the nullity of the MOA by 7 March 2022.”

In a statement, the OSG said that “Comelec’s MOA with Rappler violates the Constitution and relevant laws.”

Should the MOA be implemented, the OSG warned that “the credibility of the 2022 elections will be in shatters.”

The OSG said that “local media outfits, including members of the National Press Club, which are Constitutionally qualified to undertake the role given to Rappler, can do a much better job.”

It pointed out that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revoked on Jan. 15, 2018 the Certificate of Incorporation of Rappler “for violating the Constitution, Presidential Decree No. 1018 (the law that limits ownership and management of mass media to citizens of the Philippines), and the Anti-Dummy Law.”

“As such, Rappler does not have any legal personality to perform any corporate act, let alone enter into a MOA with the Comelec for the upcoming 2022 elections,” the OSG said.

“This absence of the essential element of consent on the part of Rappler renders the MOA void,” it said.

It also said that even if Rappler remains a corporate entity, the news outfit is still “subject to the foreign equity restriction under the Constitution” and, because of this, “the MOA contravenes this Constitutional limitation and the proscription against foreign participation in the conduct of the elections.”

At the same time, OSG stressed that since Rappler is given access to confidential data of registered voters, “a data-sharing agreement should have been executed under National Privacy Commission Circular No. 16-02.”

It noted that the MOA has tapped Rappler’s civic engagement arm MovePH without delineating or specifying the extent of the assistance to the Comelec.

“Worse, the MOA even lacks a set of qualifications of the persons who will comprise MovePH to ensure that these persons are impartial or non-partisan,” it lamented.

It also stressed that while Rappler was also permitted to establish PHVote microsite that contains, among others, information on the electoral process and candidates, “there is nothing in the MOA that states that the Comelec shall first vet and review the information about a candidate that Rappler will post in the microsite” and “grants Rappler an unbridled discretion on what information it may post regarding a candidate.”

“Rappler’s previous history of disseminating unverified and, sometimes, false claims also render it unfit for the fundamental purpose envisioned under the MOA,” the OSG also pointed out.

“Most importantly, Rappler is incapable of fulfilling its obligation under the MOA in light of recent Distributed-Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks on its entire system, which shows its extreme vulnerability to data breaches,” it added.