MANILA, Philippines - The Supreme Court is giving the Commission on Elections (Comelec) until Friday to respond to a petition that seeks to compel the poll body to reveal the entire extent of its poll automation preparations.

The petition, filed last Friday, states that the “Comelec has so far shown poor preparations and questionable acts which could lead to cheating, if not failure of elections.”

The petitioners include, among others, former Vice President Teofisto Guingona Jr. and NBN-ZTE whistleblower Rodolfo "Jun" Lozada.

The lawyer for the petitioners, Felix Curao Jr., told Dateline Philippines on Thursday that they filed the petition because the answers given by the poll body were not sufficient to address concerns of hacking and cheating.

“Their explanation isn’t comprehensive,” Curao said. “In fact, the chairman of the Senate oversight committee, Senator Francis Escudero, is condemning the Comelec for coming out with case-to-case basis explanations. They don’t have comprehensive statements on the total preparations to assure the public that the votes they cast will be counted and canvassed.”

Comelec spokesman James Jimenez responded to Curao’s criticism, insisting that the poll body has been transparent with its preparations. Jimenez said they have already explained the safeguards installed to prevent someone from hacking the system.

“We are open to sharing our preparations with all groups who ask,” Jimenez said. “We are trying to make it as public as we can, to as many concerned groups as we can. We don’t need to be told to be transparent because we already are.”

He defended the poll body’s efforts to inform the public about the automation of the polls.

“We have said many, many times that the PCOS (machines) are stand alone (systems). The canvassing system is open to the public and we have the primary result available to the public,” he said. “If you want a more technical explanation, we can give that to you but given the constraints the best thing we can say is the system may not be 100% hack-proof but whoever tries to hack the system will find it very difficult to do so and will not get away with it.”