"The Presidential Electoral Tribunal should tread carefully, indeed."
"The Presidential Electoral Tribunal should tread carefully, indeed."
I have been a journalist for more than three decades. In this length of time, you develop a keen sense of awareness on what is happening around you.
This nose for news has always served me well and has allowed me to ask incisive questions that uncover the truth, the unseen and the unsaid. A fine example is this three-year-old election protest filed by former Senator Bongbong Marcos against Leni Robredo.
For the past few weeks, I have noticed a sharp uptick in the number of social media posts pre-empting how the Supreme Court (SC), sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), would decide on the case. This move is an outdated propaganda strategy used by Nazis during World War II, and rehashed by the Liberals and Leni’s camp for the impressionable millennials.
One post that has been making the rounds in social media circles is an “FAQ” (Frequently Asked Questions) on the protest alleged posted by Robredo’s legal counsel, Atty. Emil Marañon III on Facebook.
In it, he recycles the arguments made by Robredo in one of her manifestations filed before the PET. You know, the one that was called “speculative” and promptly dismissed by the PET. In journalistic parlance, it’s an SS. Not the Nazi kind of SS but (in Tagalog it connotes something obscene) in English it’s simply a sensationalized report or a make-believe story.
This unabashed move strikes me as too presumptuous for comfort. The PET has given orders to both camps to refrain from giving statements on the merits of the case. The subjudice rule has been violated here and the PET should at least look into the matter to defend the integrity of the court.
I admire Bongbong for maintaining self-discipline and following the wishes of the court, unlike his opponent. I also wonder why the SC has not reprimanded or called the attention of Leni’s camp. Well, your guess is as good as mine.
Even several well-respected columnists from other dailies have chimed in. They seem to trumpet the same angle as Marañon’s. The message is that Bongbong failed to recover substantial votes from the manual recount and that Rule 65 of the PET compels the magistrates to dismiss the case.
Case closed, it seems, for the untrained eye, but for us who closely follow the developments in this case, the claims made by this post is preposterous. I am happy to say, that readers of my column share my bullsh*t free opinion on issues like these.
We need to remember several critical moments in this election protest to understand where it is headed. First is the assignment of the case to SC Associate Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa. Caguioa was appointed by PNoy in the SC in 2015. Before this, he was his Presidential Legal Counsel. Talk about conflict of interest.That is why Bongbong’s camp sought his recusal from the case and rightfully so—the PET, however, denied his plea.
When Bongbong filed his original protest in 2016, the second cause of action indicated was the annulment of votes from three provinces of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) namely, Basilan, Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao. Bongbong alleges that massive cheating happened in these areas and the nullification of the votes would secure him the victory.
But in the pronouncements that followed, the PET, now headed by Caguioa switched the sequence of the causes of action. The annulment cause of action became the third cause of action. With a slight of his magical hand, he has effectively caused further delay in the resolution of the case.
Fast forward to 2018, the Commission on Elections itself conducted a technical examination of election documents from the same provinces identified by Marcos. This was, however, for the election protest filed by former Sulu Governor Abdusakur Tan against then-ARMM governor Mujiv Hataman.
The report found out that up to 80 percent of the votes cast were fakes due to massive substituted voting. Many of the voters were paid or coerced to cede their right to vote. Former Comelec chair Sixto Brillantes, Tan’s lawyer said that 40,000 of the 67,000 thumbprints examined did not match with those found in official Comelec records and should be declared null and void.
This is the truth that Robredo, Justice Caguioa and their “alipores” are preventing the people from knowing. If proven true, many others may be implicated. With the LP’s power base dwindling to a handful, it would be a free-for-all and tell-all for those who had a hand in this dastardly act.
As I write this column, the PET has yet to issue the results of the findings in the manual recount of the pilot province. True to what SC Chief Justice Lucas Bersamin said, the PET should tread carefully.
Should the PET dismisses this election protest, the first casualty here would be the truth. They would be robbing the Filipino people of knowing the shenanigans done in the last elections or whether their will was truly reflected in the results of the elections. Filipinos love underdogs and they definitely hate rats.