SC dissent on Imus mayoral row says LP candidate’s rights were violated

BAGUIO CITY—A recount of ballots, secured after the Commission on Elections (Comelec) allowed the printout of the digital ballots cast in the 2010 automated elections to determine tampering allegations, may have unseated Mayor Emmanuel Maliksi of Imus, Cavite, in favor of rival Homer Saquilayan, as affirmed by the March ruling issued by the Supreme Court.

But the high court reversed itself on April 11, and remanded the Cavite election case to the Comelec.

A March 10 dissenting opinion to the court’s first ruling against Maliksi explained why. It was penned by Associate Justice Luis Bersamin, who later joined nine associate justices who granted Maliksi’s motion for reconsideration and reversed the first decision.

Bersamin said Comelec violated Maliksi’s rights when it proceeded to decrypt the digital ballots without informing him.

Comelec rule

Saguilayan’s complaint was addressed by the Comelec’s first division, which ruled against Maliksi.

Bersamin said Maliksi appealed the poll body’s decision by arguing that “the decryption violated his right to due process and is null and void for being held without notice to the parties; and [that] the ballot images were secondary evidence which could be resorted to only in the event that the ballots were unavailable or when sufficient proof existed that tampering or substitution had taken place.”

Bersamin said he voted to grant Maliksi’s petition for judicial review of the poll body’s decision, after observing that the circumstances of the case “do not authorize the courts, the Comelec, and the electoral tribunals to quickly and unilaterally resort to the printout of the picture images of the ballots … without notice to the parties.”

Decryption

“The foregoing rules further require that the decryption of then images stored in the CF cards [of the precinct count optical scan machines] and the printing of the decrypted images should take place during the revision and recount proceedings, and that it is the revision/recount committee that determines whether the ballots are unreliable,” he said.

In the Maliksi case, it was the Comelec first division which undertook this process of ballot determination, Bersamin said. “Maliksi was not even made aware of that crucial finding because the first division did not even issue any written resolutions stating its reasons for ordering the printing of the picture images,” he said.

‘Arbitrary’

He said the first division had “arbitrarily arrogated unto itself” the authority to decrypt the digital ballots.

“I write this dissent not to validate the victory of any of the parties in the 2010 elections. That is not the concern of the court, as yet. I dissent only because the court should not countenance a denial of the fundamental right to due process, which is a cornerstone of our legal system.”

The April ruling granted Maliksi’s motion for reconsideration and directed Comelec to decrypt printed ballot images and conduct a recount. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon