SC urged to resolve PCOS petitions, cases in a month

By Dexter A. See

BAGUIO CITY – The Commission on Elections urged the Supreme Court to resolve all pending petitions questioning the validity of the purchase of the more than 80,000 Print Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines in one month to allow the poll body to meet its timelines for the automated May 2013 elections.

After their first summer en banc session in the city, Chairman SixtoBrillantes said they have already reviewed the three petitions filed by different individuals questioning the validity of the purchase of the PCOS machines to be used in next year’s elections and found that that the same are purely legal questions that could immediately be resolved, thus, there is no reason for the High Court to delay action on the pending matter.

“It is not complicated,” Brillantes remarked about the three petitions, citing that “we will be very happy if the High Court will be able to resolve the petitions before the first week of May so that we could already move on to prepare for the automated elections.”

According to him, it is now a remote possibility to go back to manual elections next year even if the SC will favor the petitions questioning the validity of the PCOS machines purchase since the poll body has other alternatives in mind although he refused to divulge such remedial measures considering that it is still premature.

“The purchase of the PCOs machines is just part of our early preparations for the May 2013 automated elections,” Brillantes said, citing that “our only problem is the delay caused by the filing of the petitions.”

Before the end of the year, Brillantes said all services shall have been bidded out and awarded to the winning suppliers so that there will be enough time to prepare for other urgent concerns regarding the elections to avoid a repeat of the problems encountered during the first implementation of the May 2010 automated elections.

“We assure the Filipino people that we will have a much improved automated elections next year,” he said, adding that aside from solving the glitches of the PCOS machines in the previous elections, “there will be significant improvements and enhancements on how the elections will be done.

The chairman asserted purchase of the PCOS machines at this time seems to be the most practical thing to do to ensure the smooth implementation of next year’s automated elections because they have already been tried and tested and that the problems encountered by the Comelec during the May 2010 automated elections are simply minor and were already corrected prior to the so-called option to buy.

“If the High Court will rule against the PCOS machines purchase, we are willing to submit to the guidelines to be prescribed for the purpose of having an automated elections,” Brillantes stressed, citing that one of the possible options is for the poll body to go on public bidding.”

When asked if there is still enough time to prepare for an automated elections with a negative SC ruling, Brillantes claimed there could probably be enough time but it would be too tight to decide what will be good for the country’s automated election system.