Weigh matter carefully, Nene urges FPJ

Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr. urged yesterday defeated presidential bet Fernando Poe Jr. to carefully weigh all factors involved in the filing of an electoral protest before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) for his efforts not to go down the drain.

More importantly, Poe should keep in mind the huge cost of pursuing an election complaint, said Pimentel, who ran and won under Poe’s ticket in the last elections.

The peso-for-Poe campaign offered by his grassroots supporters to fund his electoral protest will not be enough, the senator noted.

"The so-called ‘piso-piso’ fund-raising campaign will not be sufficient to finance the cost of an electoral protest although it will have a tremendous psychological impact," Pimentel said.

The filing fee alone in this long and arduous legal process costs P10 million.

Many opposition leaders and Poe’s followers favor the filing of an electoral protest, banking on Poe’s claim that he won over President Arroyo by more than 500,000 votes.

Poe is said to be inclined to file an election protest but has yet to make a categorical statement about it. He has until July 26 to file this before the PET.

Pimentel said that taking such action would enable Poe to present ample documentary and testimonial evidence before the PET on how he was defrauded of an enormous amount of votes and how Mrs. Arroyo’s vote count was padded in several provinces allegedly through the dag-dag-bawas (vote- padding and -shaving) scheme.

"I think FPJ can prove that he was victimized by massive cheating. This will provide him the venue to present all the evidence in the possession of the opposition and to seek the examination of statements of votes (SOVs) and election returns (ERs) that were blocked by the joint canvassing committee of 12th Congress," Pimentel said.

If Poe does not pursue this protest, efforts that went into the gathering of voluminous piles of documentary evidence may be put to naught, the senator pointed out.

According to Pimentel, several witnesses have come forward to spill the beans on how certificates of canvass and other election documents were falsified through the supposed connivance of administration officials, Palace political operators, election officials and officers of the military and police.

Some officials of the Commission on Elections, poll watchdog National Citizens Movement for Free Elections and even administration political operators have expressed willingness to testify before the electoral tribunal, Pimentel added.

These witnesses, he said, are in safehouses provided by the opposition.

Pimentel said it was sad knowing that Poe and some opposition personalities have harbored reservations over the filing of an electoral protest for fear that it may be futile exercise, apart from being very expensive.

Pimentel, who claims to be a victim of dag-dag-bawas in the 1995 senatorial elections, urged Poe and his followers not to lose hope and confidence in the country’s democratic institutions and its capability to address and resolve legitimate grievances with fix fairness and justice.

The election protest, Pimentel said, will be a challenge to the PET — which consists of 15 justices of the Supreme Court — to prove that the system is working.

Pimentel said that he has been meeting with a lot of people or receiving text messages and letters expressing support to Poe’s possible filing of the protest. These people, he said, were willing to contribute at least a peso.

When Pimentel lost in the 1995 elections, he filed a protest with the Senate Electoral Tribunal and was helped by the "piso-piso campaign" then launched by cause-oriented and non-government organizations to support his protest.