No formal petition yet for cha-cha — Comelec

‘It seems that signature forms are increasing everyday and now we already have more or less 600 and our local Comelec offices are continue to receive them’

The Commission on Elections said its local offices continuously receive signature forms for the People’s Initiative that seeks to amend the 1987 Constitution with about 600 cities and municipalities nationwide have arrived as of Thursday morning.

“It seems that signature forms are increasing everyday and now we already have more or less 600 and our local Comelec offices are continue to receive them,” Comelec chairperson George Garcia told reporters on Thursday.

Garcia explained that the primary mandate of the Comelec “is to count first what we received, afterwards our local offices will issue a certification.”

He said it is part of the Comelec’s duty to collect all signature forms concerning the call of a group for Charter change via people’s initiative, noting that “no formal petition has been filed yet.”

Citing the poll body’s guidelines, Garcia said the issuance of certification by the local Comelec offices is required in filing a petition.

Election officers should doublecheck the count before issuing a certification that they received a specific number of signatures.

“The annex B should be attached in the petition, so the Annex B are those certifications issued by our local Comelec offices so that we will know more or less if these are accounted for or if we got the 3 percent or 12 percent nationwide in the determination of sufficiency in form and substance only,” he said.

He added that election officers should doublecheck the count before issuing a certification that they received a specific number of signatures.

Garcia said the verification of signatures by the local offices will follow after the accomplishment of “sufficiency in form and substance.”

The verification, he noted, will include the voting status of the signatories and the legitimacy of every signature.

He said the certificates will then be issued stating the number of voters who signed, which will be given to the proponent as part of the documents to be submitted to the clerk of Comelec.

After that, the Comelec clerk will evaluate the petition and submit to the en banc its decision as to whether they could comply with sufficiency in form and substance.