Senatorial candidate Richard “Dick” Gordon. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—The Supreme Court is not precluded from stopping the May 13 elections, former Senator Richard Gordon told the Supreme Court.
Gordon, who is one of the senatorial bets of United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) together with Bagumbayan-VNP Movement Inc., filed their petition following the pronouncement made by the Commission on Elections that it will proceed with the polls even without the source code.
In their petition, they insisted that the high court should be compelled to allow political parties and groups to examine the source code.
During Wednesday’s oral argument, Gordon said he would leave it to the court [to stop the elections] but he would rather have a clean election.
But Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno asked “where in any statute says that the election should not proceed if the source code is not shown?”
“What you are asking us to do is to intervene and not allow the election to push through. Your mandamus [petition] says you want to make the source code available to you,” Sereno said.