Roxas to file election protest, seeks recount

MANILA, Philippines - Defeated vice-presidential candidate Manuel Roxas II will file an electoral protest against Vice President Jejomar Binay before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal next week.

In an interview, Joey Tenefrancia, lead counsel of Roxas for the canvassing of votes during the May 10 elections, said they would no longer wait for the last day of filing the protest on July 9, which is 30 days after the proclamation of the president and vice-president.

“The people deserve to know what really happened (in the May 10 elections),” he said.

Binay shrugged off the planned protest. He told The STAR last night at the US embassy Fourth of July reception that it was Roxas’ right to file the protest.

Binay’s lawyer also expressed confidence the protest would be dismissed.

Tenefrancia said the filing of the electoral protest would be “for the good of our electoral system.”

“This is crucial in determining the true winner in the vice presidential race,” he said.

Tenefrancia said the camp of Roxas would be basing their arguments on the following:

• Null votes registered during the canvassing.

• Double registration.

• Problems with the transmittal. 

• Other technical issues that came up with the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines.

The null votes could be as many as three million, he added.

Based on the quick count done by the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), a total of 2.6 million null votes were recorded.

The null votes could have been caused by a number of things, including double voting, over or under-shading of the ballots and no vote cast.

Tenefrancia said the PPCRV count was able to classify the nature of the null votes.

Based on what was recorded, double voting represented only 400,000, he added.

Tenefrancia said the balance would mostly be on the over or under-shading.

They are confident most of these would be for Roxas, he added.

The case of Roxas should not be compared with that of Sen. Loren Legarda, who also filed an electoral protest against then Vice President Noli de Castro in 2004, Tenefrancia said.

The camp of Binay said a lot of stray votes no longer considered in Legarda’s electoral protest can be compared to the null votes in this year’s elections.

However, Tenefrancia said in the case of stray votes in 2004, the teachers were able to see right away the ballots that were clearly left blank and were disregarded right away.

“Now we’re just relying on the PCOS machines,” he said.

“The same PCOS machines made mistakes with the count (during the testing period). We can’t rely on the integrity of the system when every step of the way there were problems.”

The problems started with the printing of the ballots, then the digital signature, misreading of the results during the trial stage, and problems with transmission, and now the ongoing random manual count, Tenefrancia said.

After the tallying of the votes by Congress sitting as the National Board of Canvassers, Binay was declared the winner in the vice presidential race with a lead of a little over 700,000 votes over Roxas.

Tenefrancia said they were not expecting the National Board of Canvassers to act on the protests of the various candidates because they wanted to finish the canvassing right away due to time constraints.

“The Presidential Electoral Tribunal is the proper venue to check (the votes),” he said.

Binay lawyer: PET will rule in our favor

Binay’s election lawyer is confident that the PET would rule in favor of Binay in deciding the election protest of Roxas.

However, JV Bautista said they have yet to receive a copy of the protest.

“But if it is true that it is based on the so-called null votes, then we are confident that the electoral tribunal will rule in our favor,” he said.

The Comelec has considered over half a million votes cast in Central and Western Visayas, a perceived bailiwick of Roxas, as null votes.

The Comelec has declared as null votes those not counted by PCOS machines.

These are incorrectly shaded (undervoting) names of candidates or the ballot cast exceeded the number of election positions (overvoting).

Pimentel: Protest could affect Aquino

Former senator Aquilino Pimentel Jr. cautioned Roxas yesterday that his election protest against Binay could have implications on the votes for President Aquino.

“If Mar is serious about it, he’s placing Noynoy’s victory under a cloud of doubt,” he said.

The proclamation of Aquino and Binay were based on the same certificates of canvass so if Roxas succeeds in proving his case, the votes for Aquino could also be affected, Pimentel said.

However, Roxas’s protest would not have any impact on Aquino’s votes because the PET would only be tackling the votes cast for the vice-president, Tenefrancia said. - Jose Rodel Clapano