"The long wait for the decision on the Marcos petition is working against the administration."
"The long wait for the decision on the Marcos petition is working against the administration."
It has been three long years since President Rodrigo Duterte took his oath of office, and barely a month after Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos filed an electoral protest contesting the proclamation of Leni Robredo as vice president.
Why it is taking so long for the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, chaired by a former classmate of B.S. Aquino, to decide the petition remains a mystery. The people want the petition to be resolved now. What Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Caguioa is doing is a travesty of the law which he is committed to uphold. The undue delay is an insult to the institution he represents and invariably to the present administration. If Duterte does not know it yet, the undue delay in the dispensation of justice is corruption in our justice system.
The appointee of the past administration who always presents himself as the epitome of honesty has been sitting on the case. This means that all those who voted for the petitioner during the 2016 elections can wait until kingdom come. As Caguioa sits on the case, the person who is the subject of the petition styles herself as the vice president and makes a parody of the Duterte administration. The insult she delivers gives her the propaganda mileage, and who knows, gives her the advantage to grab the presidency by hook or by crook. Thus, while she savors the perks and privileges as vice president, she has access to the media to lambast the President. And the Republic of the Philippines is funding this.
Right-thinking Filipinos believe that the malicious destruction, tampering, soaking wet the ballot boxes containing the votes and loss of the election returns and other forms of vandalism have worked in the favor of this self-styled vice president. This is logical, for if there is anybody who will do everything to protect the sanctity of the ballot, it is the one who is the subject of an electoral protest. While ballot boxes, election returns and all the paraphernalia used in the election are supposed to be under the custody of the Comelec, their neglect, together with their hired contractor Smartmatic, automatically makes them liable as accomplices to the systematic fraud committed against the Filipino people.
This column is not delivering a pastoral beatitude but speaking from reality that the protection of the ballots did not end in the election but even after.This is to ensure that if there is protest, the right of the protestant or protester and the protestee are equally protected. In the first place, the winning candidates being protested are not the real parties in interest. It is the Comelec which has the duty to ensure a clean, honest and fair election. What happened is that the Comelec allowed the lawyer of Robredo to defend all those shenanigans committed during the election, which is supposed to be the duty of the Comelec.
Lawyer Romy Macalintal was awkwardly allowed to freely defend the allegations which should be addressed to the Comelec, unless there are specific acts which Robredo as candidate committed the violation of the election code. Instead, Macalintal acted as virtual lawyer for the Comelec which is an implied admission that her client committed or was responsible for those acts of electoral fraud. Alas, this is one aspect where Caguioa completely ignored.
If Marcos has every right to file a protest, that equally extends to the candidate who is the subject of a protest. However, for Robredo and her lawyer to cross the line in defense of the blatant destruction, tampering, vandalism and even loss of ballots not committed is an implied admission that she was responsible for all the electoral fraud that transpired. Robredo and her lawyer know she cannot defend matters that she has no knowledge or idea. Even if Robredo benefited from that, her lawyer should remain neutral because the act is not directly imputed to her.
Taking these into account, what then is the basis for the Comelec to dismiss the protest when it appears to have connived with Smartmatic and PPCRV in taking turns in vandalizing our electoral process? Allowing many of the ballot boxes to be dumped in filthy ponds, to be mixed with nauseating dried fish, tempered or destroyed to make it impossible to make a recount is the negligence of the Comelec. It looks like it acted as an accomplice to the electoral fraud committed by the followers and possibly supporters of Robredo.
It now becomes a dilemma for the PET to make a decision. It would be foolhardy to decide the petition in favor of Robredo just as it would be logically incompressible to accuse the petitioner of destroying the votes he seeks to be verified. It now bears upon the PET to prove that that it will decide not on the basis of rebutting the evidence argued by the lawyer of Robredo. This explains why the public is not pointing at her as the mastermind in this greatest electoral fraud that happened under the auspices of a supposedly fanatical lover of democracy.
Moreover, even if the PET decides to affirm the victory of Robredo, that would not suffice to assuage the doubt of the people. This pending protest is unfortunately working fast to erode the image of the President, for whether he likes it or not, it affects the administration of justice. As one wryly commits, the President may have been hoodwinked to believing he flushed into the toilet the Otso Diretso, but numbers tells that he got only half of his candidates. The opposition remains in control of the Senate.
This underscores the reason why the President should exert his clout for PET to speed up in deciding the case. He should be reminded that it will not do any favor for the President should the PET decided the case just before his term ends to prevent Bongbong from either taking his post or from filing his candidacy for the next election. It would even be far more unthinkable for the President to allow Robredo to win. The affirmation of her proclamation will result in the surge of the opposition, and could have a deep repercussion to the unity of the ruling party.
It is not so much of bypassing the petition of Bongbong but of rejecting our chance for a peaceful transition. His abeyance of that electoral verdict is an acknowledgment of the sentiment of the electorate. It would be worse if the President decides in favor of his daughter who is relatively a newcomer in national politics. That could spell untimely schism within the ruling party and definitely, Robredo will capitalize on the split. Hugpong ng Pagbabago, sad to say, would not be in a position the stop the avalanche that will be triggered by the unexpected turn of events.