Despite chief of staff appointment, Roxas to continue poll protest vs Binay

Manila, Philippines - The election protest of President Aquino’s losing running mate Manuel “Mar” Roxas II against Vice President Jejomar Binay would proceed despite his imminent appointment to an executive position.

An official of the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) told The STAR yesterday that Roxas may accept his post as presidential chief of staff and still pursue his bid to be declared winner in last year’s vice presidential race.

“The protest could be deemed not abandoned. In a case, it was held that acceptance of temporary appointment doesn’t constitute abandonment of election protest,” the insider said.

The PET official explained that the position of chief of staff is considered a temporary appointment “as it may be extended to one who may not possess eligibility required by law for position and is revocable at will without need for just cause or investigation.”

The source, a member of the Supreme Court that sits as PET, spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to preempt their possible ruling on this particular issue.

He clarified, however, that should Roxas accept appointment to a permanent post it would be “a different matter.”

The insider also stressed that the PET already took jurisdiction of the election protest and might have to rule on it regardless of appointment of the protestant.

“Public interest involved demands true winner be known without regard to wishes or acts of parties, thus there can be no default, compromise, nor stipulation of facts in these kinds of cases,” he said.

In his protest filed in July last year, Roxas alleged that election results used for Binay’s proclamation did not reflect actual votes due to what he described as “anomalously high incidence” of null and misread votes in the certificates of canvass in all precincts nationwide especially in his bailiwicks, Regions 6, 7 and Caraga.

Roxas believes that he should have won the election if only the Comelec counted the null votes, which supposedly largely belong to him

and would have made him overtake the final 727,084-vote advantage of Binay.

But Binay, in his answer, said that his camp has documented null votes in the automated polls and found that they were the lowest as compared to the 2004 and 2007 polls.

The Vice President, who won by a margin of 727,084 over Roxas, also argued that the results of the Comelec canvass were consistent with the surveys.

They were even further affirmed by results of random manual audit conducted by election watchdogs, which were released just last week and showed 99.6 percent accuracy rate of the poll results.

Binay also dismissed as “baseless” the allegations of Roxas that there were fraud, anomalies, irregularities and statistical improbabilities in the certain clustered precincts in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. He said they should also be dismissed for failure to cite specific precincts and present convincing evidence.

The vice president not only answered the protest against him, but also filed a counter-protest against Roxas.

He contested results in over 40,000 precincts in Regions 6, 7 and Caraga - the same regions raised by Roxas - due to irregularities including alleged use of illegal ballots and failure to use Comelec stamps.

The PET started hearing the protest and counter-protest in September last year when it designated retired Supreme Court justice Bernardo Pardo as hearing commissioner. It already took custody of the ballots used in the automated polls.

PET’s last action on the case was last April when it ordered both camps to answer a bid to allow the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to use 5,000 ballot boxes for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) elections set this August.