PET opens contested election returns

While the Supreme Court, sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), opened contested elections returns yesterday, former senator Loren Legarda cried fraud and Vice President Noli de Castro claimed a wider victory lead.

De Castro’s lawyer Romulo Macalintal said the result of the initial re-tabulation of election returns (ERs) from the House of Representatives showed that De Castro indeed won last year’s vice presidential elections.

"Legarda’s claims that there are discrepancies (are) self-serving because, in her electoral protest, she admitted that the right result was the ERs of Congress," he said.

"Now that she saw that Vice President De Castro is leading in the initial re-tabulation, she is now changing her tune and fishing for new evidence in her desperate effort to win in her electoral protest."

Macalintal said Legarda can no longer use as evidence her claims of discrepancies in the ERs from Comelec and the House because of an earlier claim made in her protest that the ERs in the House were considered the correct results.

Macalintal said the burden to prove whether there are indeed discrepancies between the ERs from the Comelec and the House belongs to Legarda herself.

"She should discuss this in her memorandum and not to the media," he said.

"It only shows that Vice President De Castro won with a wide margin against Legarda," he said.

"There are no discrepancies because, as Legarda admitted in her complaint, the best evidence is the ERs from Congress," he said.

"The final arbiter in the electoral protest of Legarda against De Castro would be the PET itself," Macalintal said. — Jose Rodel Clapano, Pia Lee-Brago