For lack of money, Loren seeks to drop poll protest in 10 Lanao towns

Former senator Loren Legarda yesterday asked the Supreme Court, sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), to allow her to withdraw her protest involving manifest errors in at least 10 towns in Lanao del Norte and five in Surigao del Sur.

In a four-page urgent motion filed through lawyer Sixto Brillantes Jr., Legarda said she only needs 10 towns in Lanao del Sur as the remaining subject of her pilot precincts on the first aspect of her electoral protest against Vice President Noli de Castro.

Legarda said she cannot afford to pay the expenses needed for the retabulation in the 10 towns in Lanao del Norte and five in Surigao del Sur.

"The retabulation of the above mentioned pilot precincts from Lanao del Norte and Surigao del Sur will entail so much expenses, where the process will simply involve recanvass of mere election returns, considered in the light of a prior ruling of The Honorable Tribunal that the required deposits for expenses for such retabulation is fixed at P500 per precinct, rather than P500 per ballot box, interpreting most strictly the Tribunal rules on deposits," she said.

Legarda said that under such an arrangement, she anticipates that her deposits will be "substantially depleted" if she will pursue the retabulation of the many election returns covering several precincts in the 10 municipalities in Lanao del Norte and five municipalities in Surigao del Sur.

"Thus, considering that my finances are not that abundant, I would prefer to make use of my limited finances and deposits in prosecuting the second aspect of my protest involving the revision of ballots, which will cost me the same sum of P500 per precinct," she said.

Legarda told the court that in the process of her preparation for the first aspect of her protest, she had secured from the Commission on Elections certified true copies of the election returns from Lanao del Norte and Surigao del Sur.

"I had predetermined that recoveries that could be derived therefrom would not be that substantial, so as to warrant the large costs of retabulation which is based on a per precinct computation," she said.

Legarda said in the absence of any "prior inventory" of contents of ballot boxes retrieved from Congress, she cannot even be sure as to how many of the election returns to be retabulated are actually available for retabulation.

"I now feel and am unwilling to risk my limited deposits costing P500 per precinct, under such an uncertainty as to the number of protested election returns that will be discovered from the retrieved ballot boxes," she said.

Legarda said that instead of spending a portion of her limited deposits for the retabulation of election returns at a high cost, she has decided to use the funds to pursue the second aspect of her protest for the revision of ballots from Cebu and other provinces.