MANILA - The Supreme Court has not issued a TRO on the signing of the contract for the 2010 Elections Automation Project between COMELEC and Smartmatic-Total Information Management (TIM).
The contract was set to be signed at 2 p.m. Thursday, July 10.
Earlier in the morning, Supreme Court Spokesperson Midas Marquez said in an interview over ANC’s News@8 that the High Court will try to rule on a petition filed by a group of lawyers to stop the automation contract. As of 4p.m., however the High Court has yet to release its ruling.
Lawyer Harry Roque said, however, that even though the the Supreme Court has not issued a TRO the implementation of such a contract “may still be restrained.”
“This was clearly the situation in the MEGA PACIFIC case, wherein the Supreme Court declared as null and void the contract executed between COMELEC and Mega Pacific eSolutions, even after payment was made by the COMELEC,” Roque said in a statement released to the media.
“In any case, let it not be said that we did not warn the public against automated failure of elections and automated cheating,” Roque added. “We filed the case out of a strong sense of public duty; we will remain vigilant and we will not give up until we’ve seen the case through.”
“Let it be said that not everyone slept during the dark hours of this nation.”