SC OKs bid of Cebu town mayoralty bet days ahead of ballot reprinting

Facade of the Supreme Court of the Philippines. | PHOTO: Official website of the Supreme Court / sc.judiciary.gov.p

MANILA, Philippines — Two days before the reprinting of ballots, another local aspirant got a Supreme Court (SC) green light for his name included in the choices for a mayoralty post.

The SC on Monday issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) preventing the Comelec from implementing its resolutions canceling Jonas C. Cortes’s certificate of candidacy for mayor of Mandaue City, Cebu.

“The TRO also prevented the Comelec from deleting his name from the list of candidates for the said position,” the high court said in its press release.

Comelec chairman George Erwin Garcia said the poll body will then include Cortes’ name in the ballots.

“We will comply,” Garcia told reporters in a Viber message. “No printing of ballots yet.”

On Monday, Garcia said the Comelec will begin the printing of ballots on Jan. 22 “at all costs.”

The Comelec had begun the printing of ballots last Jan. 6.

However,  on Jan. 14, the SC blocked Comelec’s move to declare Senate hopeful Subair Guinthum Mustapha as a nuisance candidate.

Mustapha was then included in the list of senatorial candidates despite the commencement of the printing of the ballot which did not bear his name.

Because of this, the Comelec discarded six million ballots for the upcoming midterm polls without Mustapha’s name, causing a P132 million financial loss to the Comelec.

Several aspirants for local political posts were also favored by the SC, but the high court’s ruling on them had no effect on the scheduled printing of ballots since the poll body had yet to print ballots with names of local aspirants.

The six million discarded ballots  were only for local and overseas absentee voting as well as for Bangsamoro voters.