The House of Representatives’ Electoral Tribunal has upheld the landslide victory of Manila 1st District Rep. Manuel Luis T. Lopez in the May 13, 2019 congressional elections after it dumped the election protest by his lone opponent in the polls.
“This re-election is not for me but for the thousands of Manileños who have given me the mandate to represent their voices in the halls of Congress. Finally, this protest filed on mere suspicion, devoid of factual basis, and aimed at harassment has been junked,” said Lopez who heads the House of Representatives’ Committee on Metro Manila Development.
“Since the beginning, we were confident that the will of the people and the choice of my constituents will emerge victorious against this obvious political maneuver. We thank the HRET for settling this matter once and for all.
“Our landslide win was clear and irrefutable that even our opponent failed to present his supposed ‘witnesses’.”
The Tribunal dumped losing candidate Benjamin Asilo’s protest against Lopez who secured 86,993 votes or 13,687 votes more compared to Asilo’s 73,306. Asilo was a two-termer councilor and the representative of the First District of Manila for three consecutive terms until Lopez was first elected in 2016.
“While the protest did not hinder me from doing my mandate to serve our constituents, this decision has inspired me to do more and serve better. “The people elected me to serve them, and that has been and will continue to be my main focus,” Lopez said.
Said HRET: “The instant Election Protest dated July 4, 2019, filed on July 8, 2019, is dismissed for being insufficient in form and substance, in accordance with Rule 23, paragraph 1 of the 2015 HRET Rules. Protestee’s Counter-Protest dated August 31, 2019, filed on September 2, 2019, is likewise dismissed as a consequence of the dismissal of the Election Protest,” the decision reads.
Lopez agreed with the Tribunal when it noted that the move of Asilo to do away with the testimonies of 112 witnesses supposedly as proof of the “traditional election irregularities, manipulations and anomalies” only shows that his causes of action are not lodged on factual basis but merely on “shocking discrepancy” between the number of voters.
“The protestant himself admitted that local pre-election surveys projected my win and that his contention was based on his disbelief that he lost ‘not by hundreds but by thousands of votes’,” Lopez said.