House minority bloc wants probe into ballot printing anomaly

House Minority Leader Danilo Suarez. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — The House minority bloc on Wednesday called for an investigation into the alleged anomalies of the National Printing Office in awarding the contract to print ballots for the 2013 elections to a private firm.

In a press conference, House minority leader Danilo Suarez said that they have filed House Resolution 2884 which called fellow lawmakers to investigate the supposed anomalies in the NPO’s awarding of the P784-million contract to print next year’s 55 million election ballots to the Holy Family Printing Corporation.

The resolution stated that “election forms shall be printed exclusively by the National Printing Office and/or the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas” under Section 3 of the Memorandum Circular No. 180 which was issued back on August 13, 2009.

Suarez reiterated their opposition to the idea of “farming out the printing of official ballots to a third party because of the possible ramifications it may have on election results.”

He earlier questioned why Holy Family Printing Corporation was chosen by the NPO to print the ballots when it failed to meet the requirements for bidders. He also pointed out before that the private firm’s sample ballots were also found to be incompatible with the PCOS (precinct count optical scan) machines.

The minority leader also revealed that they received “unconfirmed reports from some of our members that a number of people going around in the ARMM advertising their services to guarantee favorable outcomes for takers in the next elections.”

“Unconfirmed as they are, these reports taken together with the allegation of an anomaly in the awarding of the contract for printing the official ballots should nevertheless merit our collective vigilance,” he said.