PET junks Roxas poll protest vs Binay

MANILA, Philippines – The Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) has dismissed the election protest filed by former interior secretary Manuel Roxas II against former vice president Jejomar Binay over their face-off in the 2010 vice presidential race.

In a press conference yesterday, Supreme Court spokesman Theodore Te announced that the high court, sitting as PET, has decided to dismiss Roxas’ protest and Binay’s counter-protest for being moot.

“With the assumption of Vice President Leni Robredo, the tenure of the office being contested herein by Roxas and Binay had expired... It is a settled rule that courts refrain from deciding on moot cases because any decision that may be rendered thereon would have no practical or useful purpose, and cannot be enforced,” he explained.

Roxas and Binay ran for president in the general polls last May, where they both lost to President Duterte.

The ruling, which may be issued in the “following months,” would effectively uphold the election of Binay as vice president, according to an insider.

The source from the SC told The STAR that the dismissal of Roxas’ protest would be “inevitable” since the tribunal has failed to resolve it based on merits.

“It will likely be dismissed. It will just be a matter of which ground to be cited,” bared a member of the court, who requested anonymity due to lack of authority to speak for the tribunal.

The source cited previous cases handled by the tribunal where protests were dismissed when the protestants ran for elective posts in succeeding polls.

Another insider confirmed that the protest might be junked based on technicality, citing PET rules.

“Theoretically, it (protest) can be considered moot upon filing of COC (certificate of candidacy) by the protestant (Roxas),” the source explained.

Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno earlier vowed to resolve pending cases related to the previous polls in time for the conduct of the general elections last May.

Binay had moved for the dismissal of the case in October last year when they both filed certificates of candidacy for the presidency.

He asked the PET to junk the election protest due to Roxas’ abandonment of the case.

Binay argued that Roxas appeared to be no longer interested in pursuing the case after he failed to pay the required filing fee of P166,635,000.

They also cited Roxas’ inaction on his earlier plea for forensic examination and random manual audit of the ballots, which the Binay camp branded as a “self-serving fishing expedition” not provided under PET rules.

Binay’s lawyers pointed out that it has been five years since Roxas sought the conduct of forensic examination during preliminary conference on the case but the latter has not even filed a motion for resolution.

The last time the PET acted on the case was in December 2012 when it granted a request of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to use 75 percent of the ballot boxes containing votes under protest by Roxas for the 2013 elections to save the government more than P160 million.

Binay’s camp had asked the PET to junk the protest for lack of merit and for being invalid. But the tribunal has not acted on their plea.

In his protest filed in July 2010, 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 believed 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 said that his camp had documented null votes in the automated polls and found that they were the lowest compared to the 2004 and 2007 polls.

Binay also argued that the results of the Comelec canvass were consistent with the results of surveys.

They were even further affirmed by results of the random manual audit conducted by election watchdogs, which 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 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.

Binay 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 2010 when it designated retired SC Justice Bernardo Pardo as hearing commissioner.