THE Commission on Elections said Tuesday it will again move the printing of the ballots to Feb. 8 from Feb. 1 a week after Senate President Franklin Drilon accused it of “railroading” the printing of the ballots for the national and local elections.
Comelec commissioner Christian Robert Lim denied they gave in to Drilon’s demand to move the printing of the ballots to a later date, adding they did it because the commissioners en banc decided to move it.
“This moving of the printing is being done with a heavy heart. It is against our will,” Lim told reporters.
“I don’t want to move the printing.”
Lim made his statement even as the Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a petition seeking to compel the Comelec to include the choices “None of The Above” and “The Above Only” in the ballots for the May 9 national and local elections.
Meeting in full, the justices denied the petition filed by lawyer Eduardo Bringa for lack of merit.
“The Court also denied the application for a temporary restraining order,” high court spokesman Theodore Te told reporters.
Lim said the release of the final list of candidates and the printing of the ballots was supposed to be on Feb. 1 but the commissioners decided to move it to Feb. 8.
“If they move the printing further, then they better be ready to postpone the elections,” Lim said.
Last week, Drilon accused the Comelec of railroading the ballot printing by slating its start on Feb. 1 despite the pending disqualification case against presidential aspirant Grace Poe before the Supreme Court.
Asked if the move was meant to give-in from Drilon’s demand, Comelec chairman Andres Bautista denied as such explaining that they are just being “open to the opinions of the stakeholders”.
“We are trying to accommodate the calls of certain quarters… (but) we don’t allow ourselves to be dictated,” Bautista said.
“We are a commission though that has to listen with our stakeholders. All of you are stakeholders and we listen to reason… If it is within reason and we don’t think it will favor anyone,” the poll chief added.
Originally, the Comelec is supposed to start printing the ballot on Jan. 26 but was moved to Feb. 1.
With the second adjustment, Lim said they now expect the National Printing Office to finish printing the 57-million ballots by April 25.
Lim said there are only three Canon printers at the NPO and they plan to produce an average of one million a day.
With the new date of printing, the Comelec now hopes that the SC will soon conclude the oral arguments and solve the cases against Poe before they finalize the certified list of candidates on Feb. 3, five days before they start the printing of ballots.
“We understand that there is an ongoing oral argument and we hope that the SC can close the oral arguments by today. We have to finalize the list of candidates by February 3,” Lim said.
“We think that it would be better if a final decision is reached in respect of the cases against certain candidates,” Bautista for his part said.
Earlier, the SC has issued a temporary restraining order against the plan of Comelec to delete the name of Poe from the list of presidential candidates in the upcoming elections.