The House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal (HRET) has dismissed the protest filed against Kabataan party-list group by an antigraft group for alleged fraud and irregularities in the 2019 elections.
The party-list group You Against Corruption and Poverty (YACAP), through its first nominee Carol Jayne Lopez, claimed there were “massive electoral fraud, anomalies, and irregularities” in all the 341 protested clustered precincts in General Santos City, Cotabato, “which include misreading of ballots, miscounting of votes, and the unexplained and improper rejection of ballots for YACAP.”
These, Lopez said, led to a significant decrease in the number of votes for YACAP.
Kabataan, on the other hand, branded the protest “insufficient in substance” since it failed to allege the specific acts or omissions constituting election anomalies.
Kabataan added that the Tribunal had no jurisdiction over the case as YACAP had “failed to implead all the indispensable parties to the case.”
Kabataan party-list Rep. Sarah Elago welcomed the dismissal of the said poll protest.
“This is really good news to us. We thank our members, fellow advocates, and counsels who stood with the Kabataan Partylist in defending its own representation in the face of attempts to remove it from Congress,” Elago said.
She also thanked those who supported the group in the course of the protest.
In deciding the case, the HRET said that Kabataan party-list ranked 51st among the 181 party-list candidates that ran and voted for in the May 2019 elections. On the other hand, YACAP ranked 58th.
Rule 17 of HRET rules provides that election protest can only be filed by the candidates who obtained the second or third highest number of votes.
In this case, HRET said party-list groups AKMA-PTM (52nd) and SBP (53rd) have legal standing to file the poll protest as they obtained the second and third highest number of votes following Kabataan.
“Thus, the YACAP party-list does not have legal standing to file the instant election protest and cannot claim to be entitled to any of the reliefs sought in the protest,” the ruling, promulgated on March 18, stated.