THE Supreme Court on Monday announced the dismissal of the petitions for mandamus seeking to compel the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to allow groups to open and review the source code in the vote-counting machines (VCM) provided for under Republic Act 9369, or the Election Modernization Act of 1997.
In an en banc decision dated April 30 but was released to the media only yesterday, the Court also denied the motion of the petitioners—Sen. Richard J. Gordon, the Bagumbayan-NVP Movement Inc. and Tanggulang Demokrasya—to hold former Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr. in contempt for his failure to comply with his commitments to the Court during the May 8, 2013, oral arguments to, among others, make the source code available for review and to grant more time to the parties to comply with the requirements to do so.
“In deciding that Chairman Brillantes is not liable for indirect contempt, the Court focuses solely on the undertakings that were directly promised to the Court, not those which the petitioner feels were promised,” the SC added.