EDITORIAL - Resolve this ASAP

With just four months to go before election day, the printing of 73 million ballots is back to square one. On Tuesday afternoon, the Commission on Elections, in an emergency full session, suspended the printing of ballots that started Jan. 6 at the National Printing Office. Yesterday, Comelec Chairman George Garcia announced that six million ballots already printed would have to be destroyed, to dispel fears that they might be used fraudulently in May or in other elections.

These include ballots for local absentee voting, overseas voting, test ballots, the parliamentary elections in the Bangsamoro region and the vote in Caraga. The ballot printing had to be suspended to accommodate a restraining order issued by the Supreme Court, which stopped the Comelec from enforcing its ruling disqualifying five candidates from the midterm elections on May 12. One of the five is a senatorial aspirant whose name was excluded from the six million ballots.

Among those covered by the temporary restraining order of the SC is Edgar Erice, who is aspiring to return to his congressional seat in Caloocan. Erice had been a vocal critic of the Comelec’s decision to end the services of automated election system provider Smartmatic and to tap instead South Korean firm Miru Systems. The Comelec said he was disqualified for spreading “false and alarming” information, in violation of Section 261 of the Omnibus Election Code.

Garcia said the 77-day timetable for ballot printing would be delayed by two weeks, but the elections would proceed as scheduled. He said the Comelec has a “plan B for this kind of situation” and “we are in control of the situation.”

What happens if the Comelec’s DQ orders are ultimately upheld anyway by the SC? And what if more candidates run to the high tribunal to challenge their disqualification? The SC gave the Comelec 10 days to comment on Erice’s petition. The tribunal cannot take its usual sweet time deliberating on this case; it requires resolution ASAP.

The SC has already issued rulings that have eroded the authority of the Comelec. These include the ruling that there is no such thing as premature campaigning even after certificates of candidacy have been filed and before the start of the campaign period. Other SC rulings rendered the Comelec inutile in its efforts to regulate the display of campaign materials, and affirmed legislation that turned the party-list system into a farce.

Apart from the swift resolution of the disqualification cases, the issue must be resolved by the SC in a way that doesn’t further emasculate the Comelec. After all, it is the Comelec that is the constitutional body tasked to supervise elections, not the Supreme Court.