THE Supreme Court has junked a petition filed by anti-corruption watchdog Anti-Trapo Movement (ATM) seeking to stop the Land Transportation Office from continuing the P836 million contract it entered into with a private firm for the production of driver’s license cards for allegedly being disadvantageous to the government.
In a 26-page decision promulgated last June 27 but made public only last September 7, the High Court’s Second Division said ATM has no legal standing to question the legality of the deal between the LTO and NEXTIX, Dermalog Identification Systems, and CFP Strategic Transaction Advisors Joint Venture (Dermalog) for the procurement of more than eight million plastic license cards with a five-year validity for 2017.
“The Court will only exercise the power of judicial review if the action is brought by ‘a party who has legal standing to raise the constitutional or legal question,’” the SC ruling penned by Associate Justice Marvic Leonen said.
Concurring with the ruling were Associate Justices Mario Lopez, Jhosep Lopez, Amy Lazaro-Javier and Antonio Kho Jr.
Legal standing, according to the SC, pertains to “a personal and substantial interest in the case such that the party has sustained or will sustain direct injury as a result of the governmental act that is being challenged.”
The SC also thrashed the claim of ATM that its petition raised “transcendental public importance,” one of the exceptions to the rule on legal standing, considering that the petition is meant to protect the government and the people from an allegedly anomalous contract.
ATM argued that the P79,668,053.55 difference between losing bidder Banner Plastikard, Inc. (Banner), which submitted the lowest bid, and Dermalog is an overprice that would be shouldered by Filipinos, particularly motor vehicle owners.
“If this sheer number of affected Filipinos is not of transcendental importance, then transcendental importance would lose its meaning,” ATM said.
LTO disqualified Banner for being non-responsive to bidding requirements and subsequently awarded the contract to Dermalog.
The SC said that while Banner made the lowest calculated bid at P89.71 per license card compared to Dermalog’s P99.16, this does not automatically mean it should bag the contract, especially since it was found noncompliant during the mandatory post qualification process.
