There is no more questioning the legality of Joseph “Erap” Estrada as the mayor of Manila.
Estrada’s legal team made this assertion Thursday after the Commission on Elections or Comelec dismissed the election protest filed by defeated mayoralty candidate Alfredo Lim.
Lawyer George Erwin Garcia said the Comelec decision will finally put to rest “Lim’s baseless allegations of massive fraud” during the May 2016 polls.
“We will be able to close a chapter of the problem,” Garcia told Manila Standard. “Because until this case is resolved, Mr. Lim’s supporters still had hopes they could win.”
“But because of this decision, we will be able to finish this, and hopefully [Lim’s camp] will be able to accept this decision of the Comelec,” the counsel added.
In a Feb. 23 resolution, Comelec’s First Division held that Lim’s petition seeking to disqualify Estrada from the mayoralty post was filed out of time.
It also junked Lim’s claim in seeking the annulment of Estrada’s proclamation on grounds that the City Board of Canvassers canvassed votes illegally through the manual uploading of results to the Comelec.
The resolution was signed by Comelec First Division presiding Commissioner Robert Lim and Commissioners Luie Tito Guia and Ma. Rowena Amelia Guanzon.
With total votes of 283,149, Estrada beat Lim for a second term in office. Lim got 280,464 votes, while the third mayoralty candidate, former fifth district Rep. Amado Bagatsing, had 167,829 votes.
While Lim may still appeal the ruling, the Estrada camp stressed the Comelec’s decision only affirmed the legality of the former President’s successful reelection.
“There is no more question as to the legality of the proclamation of Mayor Erap as the legitimate mayor of Manila, and there is no more question as to who is really the mayor of the city of Manila,” Garcia said.
He also advised Lim to accept his defeat “as a real gentleman would really accept what happens, because this is really what the Comelec as a constitutional body had said.”
Lim’s accusations of election cheating, such as the city government’s distribution of tablet computers to Manila public school teachers a month prior to the elections, and the alleged intentional power failure during the canvassing “were all products of the ex-mayor’s imagination,” Garcia pointed out.
In his petition, Lim claimed that in April prior to the elections, the city government distributed over 7,000 tablets to public school teachers.
These tablets, Lim said, were used by the Board of Election Inspectors to manipulate or alter the dates in the secure digital cards before surrendering them for uploading to the Comelec’s Consolidation and Canvassing System.
The Comelec, however, believed otherwise.
“Lim failed to substantiate his claim that the BEIs used the tablets to manipulate, alter or modify the data in the SD cards before surrendering them for uploading to the CCS,” the poll body said.
The Comelec noted the witnesses presented by Lim merely reiterated suspicions of wrongdoing owing to the lack of cellular-phone signal in the canvassing venue, the manual uploading of results, and other circumstances relative to the delivery of the SD cards used in the election.
Likewise, the Comelec stressed that manual uploading of results is provided under Comelec Resolution No. 10083 as a contingency measure in the event of electronic failure.
“In sum, we find that the petition under Section 68 of the OEC (Omnibus Election Code) was filed out of time, insofar as the prayer for disqualification is concerned. We also find that there is no sufficient proof that would allow us to conclude that the canvass proceedings were attended by illegality, which could have justified the annulment of Estrada’s proclamation,” the Comelec ruled.
