MANILA - The Supreme Court (SC) has not acted yet on a petitioner's plea to halt election systems vendor Smartmatic-TIM from supplying the compact flash (CF) cards for the mid-term polls.

Instead, the high court en banc, in a one-page resolution dated Jan. 22 but released to the media only on Friday, directed respondents Commission on Elections (Comelec) and Smartmatic-TIM to file their comment within a 5-day non-extendible period to the petition of CF card failed bidder LDLA Marketing.

LDLA filed a petition for certiorari, mandamus and prohibition with the high court, urging it to void the contract between Comelec and Smartmatic-TIM for the supply of the CF cards, and to compel Comelec to award the contract to LDLA instead.

LDLA questioned why the contract was awarded to Smartmatic-TIM when the latter's bid was P50.9 million whereas their's (LDLA's) was only P33.5 million.