Macalintal says Corona trial, Roxas poll protest not related

MANILA, Philippines - Veteran election lawyer Romulo Macalintal yesterday expressed doubts over reports linking the impeachment of Chief Justice Renato Corona to the electoral protest against Vice President Jejomar Binay before the Supreme Court sitting as presidential electoral tribunal (PET).

Macalintal dismissed as “highly impossible” insinuations that the bid to oust Corona is part of a plot to give President Aquino’s losing running mate and now Transportation Secretary Manuel ‘Mar’ Roxas II a fighting chance in his protest against Binay once the President appoints a new chief justice who will sit as chairman of the PET.

“Like a vagrant, such claim has no visible means of legal or factual support,” he stressed.

The reports came out citing a source that claimed Binay is the real target of Corona’s impeachment given the possibility of Aquino appointing Senior Justice Antonio Carpio to the top SC post.

Carpio is from Villaraza Cruz Marcelo & Angcangco law office, otherwise known as ‘The Firm’, which supported Aquino and Roxas during their campaign in 2010.

“For sure, Carpio and the rest of the other justices cannot change the results of the election for vice-president without any solid and material evidence to overcome the 727,084-vote lead of Binay over Roxas,” Macalintal explained.

“The said election was conducted under an automated system where each and every ballot has a picture image which could be resorted to once the physical count of the ballots do not tally with the results reflected in the election returns and statement of votes,” he added.

Macalintal also cited the very low success in prosecution of protests in the last automated polls before the Commission on Elections and House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal.

“Hence, if would be highly impossible for a justice of the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) to miscount or misread any ballot claimed by Roxas to defeat Binay’s vote-lead,” he argued.

Macalintal further explained the prohibitive cost of pursuing election protests and the lack of time to resolve the same may eventually persuade Roxas to abandon the effort.

He said there are 76,000 clustered precincts involved in his protest. Each precinct would cost Roxas at least P1,000 to bring to the PET or a total of P76 million just to retrieve these ballot boxes.

“At an average of 50 precincts revised per day, it would take the PET 1,520 days to complete revision of 76,000 precincts or 50.6 months or 4.2 years to finish the revision process which has not yet even started as of date. With 35 regular and alternate revisors receiving P1,000 per day and two supervising revisors at P2,000 per day, Roxas will spend P39,000 a day or P59,280,000 for 1,520 days revision,” Macalintal explained.

These expenses do not yet include attorney’s fees and other litigation expenses to be shouldered by Roxas, he added.

Macalintal also believes it would be impractical for Roxas to pursue his protest.

“As per report, Roxas spent P279 million in the last election. Pursuing his election protest with similar expenses will not be practical at this time. He might as well reserve it when he aspires for another political position in the 2013 polls.And if he does it, that would also constitute an abandonment of his election protest against Binay,” he explained.

In his protest filed in July 2010, Roxas alleged the election results used for Binay’s proclamation did not reflect actual votes due to what he described as “anomalously high incidence” of null and misread votes in the certificates of canvass in all precincts nationwide especially in his bailiwicks, Regions 6, 7 and Caraga.

Roxas believes that he should have won the election if only the Comelec counted the null votes, which supposedly largely belong to him and would have made him overtake the final 727,084-vote advantage of Binay.

‘Baseless allegations’

Binay replied his camp has documented null votes in the automated polls and found that they were the lowest as compared to the 2004 and 2007 polls.

The Vice President also argued the results of the Comelec canvass were consistent with the surveys.

They were even further affirmed by results of random manual audit conducted by election watchdogs, which were released just last week and showed 99.6- percent accuracy rate of poll results.

Binay also dismissed as “baseless” the allegations of fraud, anomalies, irregularities and statistical improbabilities in the certain clustered precincts in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

He said they should also be dismissed for failure to cite specific precincts and present convincing evidence.

Binay not only answered the protest against him, but also filed a counter-protest against Roxas.

He contested the results in over 40,000 precincts in Regions 6, 7 and Caraga – the same regions raised by Roxas – on alleged irregularities in- cluding the use of illegal ballots and failure to use Com- elec stamps.

The PET started hearing the protest and counter-protest in September 2010 when it designated retired SC justice Bernardo Pardo as hearing commis- sioner. It already took custody of the ballots used in the automated polls.

PET’s last action on the case was when it released last month records in the election protest for resolution of three cases of local election protest in the 2010 polls.