VP vote recount points to massive electoral fraud

BY THE MANILA TIMES ON JULY 9, 2018

The Supreme Court, acting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, should not stop at merely ordering the officials of the Board of Election Inspectors (BEI) in Camarines Sur to explain the irregularities in ballots from the 2016 vice presidential polls. The controversial election results that year are the subject of a protest filed by former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr. against Vice President Leni Robredo.

The high court should not avoid but squarely face the dawning implication that the irregularities in the VP balloting in Camarines Sur point to a grimmer reality: that the Liberal Party and the administration of former President Benigno Aquino Jr. cheated in that election with abandon and on a national scale to secure victory for their candidates.

It is fortunate that in defiance of conventional wisdom that election protests in the presidential and vice-presidential races normally do not get anywhere in this country, Marcos Jr. pressed ahead with his protest. Protestors are usually daunted by the huge cost of pressing an electoral protest on to recounting stage; they normally give up before a single ballot can be counted.

A second reason for the record of futility is that the PET usually would take forever to move, let alone resolve the cases. Before the protests could uncover anything, a new election is at hand. The protestor is then induced to run in the new election, thereby abandoning his protest.

With the help of friends, Marcos raised all the money demanded by PET for the protest to push through. He has patiently slogged through the tactics of delay deployed by the other camp to scuttle the protest, and refused to settle for mere propaganda points. In so doing, the Marcos protest has moved forward and gone on to open the ballot boxes in Camarines Sur and Iloilo, and soon also in Negros Oriental. The ballot boxes have turned out to be veritable Pandora’s boxes of election irregularities.

In the face of all the irregularities found in the ballot boxes, PET has found its voice. It has moved decisively to declare that the Marcos protest, indeed, has basis. The vote recount process is resembling more and more a case buildup for a criminal case. The evidence gathered is gradually pointing to the guilty party.

In the VP election protest, the overwhelming message of the vote recount is relentlessly unpleasant for VP Robredo: that unless the Liberal Party in Camarines Sur could prove otherwise, it did not only rig the balloting, but it also tried to cover up the crime, crudely.

The situation is so bad that even Ms. Robredo herself may realize the writing on the wall. She could plausibly say that she herself did not cheat; she is only the beneficiary of the cheating perpetrated by her party and the Aquino administration.

It will be good if PET does not shy away from the implications of the vote recount. It is not plausible that the cheating was only done in the VP race; the Liberal Party-administration effort must have extended to the other races.

In the presidential and senatorial contests, no formal protests have been lodged, so there is no recount there. But the public is doing its own recount, and in the public mind, suspicion is strong that some senators orating in the Senate today do not deserve to be there. Worse, somebody may have topped the senatorial elections under suspicious circumstances.

The point is that our electoral politics seriously needs fixing. The Supreme Court can help midwife the necessary electoral reform by enabling the true verdict to emerge in the VP voter recount. It could encourage even the incorrigible and corrupt elements in the Comelec to change their ways.

http://www.manilatimes.net/vp-vote-recount-points-to-massive-electoral-fraud/417563/