The Commission on Elections on Friday stressed that a plebiscite from the People’s Initiative to amend the 1987 Constitution can only be triggered after a petition is filed in the en banc main office.

In a statement, Comelec chairperson George Erwin Garcia stressed that the poll body cannot be tied to any timelines by any group or individual following the earlier statement made by Albay Representative Joey Salceda that the proponents of PI for Charter change are aiming to have the plebiscite by July as they expect to reach the required number of signatures by then.

Garcia cited that the Comelec will only determine the timeline of a plebiscite event based on the existing laws and policies.

“I saw on social media the dates that they were targeting, but the truth is — how can they say there are timelines like that, if there’s no petition has been filed to the Comelec?” Garcia said.

“All of these will start, the trigger will start if there’s one petition filed in the main office of the Comelec. From there, we can start the computation,” he added.

The poll body chief also said that the current process is still on the signature gathering.

“So far, we think that it is not enough and based on our monitoring, we have 253 districts, it looks like the signatures from different districts submitted to our local Comelec offices has not yet reached to 253,” Garcia said.

He added that it is too early to estimate that the conduct of a plebiscite may be done by June or July.

“It seems that they are pushing it too much as we will still have to verify the signatures later if the petition is filed, the verification is not that easy,” said Garcia, adding that the verification will include the voting status of the signatories and matching the legitimacy of every signature to registered voters.

Garcia also said that the verification of the signatures shall not exceed 60 days as mandated by the law.