The Commission on Elections (Comelec) expressed confidence that the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) will grant their request to re-use the 60,000 ballot boxes to save the government millions of pesos.

Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes said if the PET would allow them to re-use the ballot boxes, which are part of the election protest filed by Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) Secretary Mar Roxas against Vice-President Jejomar Binay in 2010, they would be saving a lot of money.

“That’s 80,000 (ballot boxes) worth P200 million. What we proposed is that we will take out the contents of three ballot boxes and put in just one box. If we do that we would be able to free about three-fourths or about 60,000,” he said.

Brillantes noted that if the request would be granted they would only have to bid out 20,000 ballot boxes for the May 2013 polls.

“We’re going to save a lot of money because we only need to bid 20,000 new ballot boxes,” he said.

The PET is expected to come out with a resolution today.

The electoral protest was filed by Roxas in July 2010 questioning 76,000 out of the more than 80,000 ballot boxes before the PET.*PNA