Roxas mulls filing poll protest

With Makati City Major Jejomar Binay emerging as the apparent winner in the vice presidential race, his closest rival, Senator Manuel "Mar" Roxas II, on Tuesday said his camp is now gathering evidence for a possible electoral protest. In a statement, Roxas maintained that the 2.6 million null votes for the vice presidential race should be manually audited by the Commission on Elections (Comelec). "I have instructed my lawyers to gather records and evidence, and to study and prepare towards the possibility of filing an electoral protest. We have 30 days to do this," Roxas said. "I owe it to our people to ensure that the electoral process will truly be an instrument of their will," he added. According to the congressional canvass of votes that ended Tuesday afternoon, Roxas' running mate Senator Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III and Binay dominated the polls, receiving 15,208,678 and 14,645,574 votes, respectively, during the May 10 elections. In his manifestation after the canvass was completed, Roxas's legal counsel affirmed Roxas's instructions. "We have received specific instructions from the good senator for us to gather data, analyze and review this data, and prepare a study for the filing of an electoral protest to be submitted to Senator Roxas for his consideration," Roland Solis said. But even as his camp questioned the counting of votes, Roxas congratulated Aquino for garnering 5.7 million votes over his closest rival, former President Joseph Estrada, the running mate of Binay. "Let us all rally behind the leadership of President-elect Noynoy Aquino," Roxas said. "It is my pledge to continue to do everything within my power to support the people’s agenda under an Aquino administration."

Source: Comelec for the 1992 and 1998 data; Joint committee report of the NBOC for the 2004 data. GMA News Research

Roxas was the consistent frontrunner in vice presidential preference surveys until Binay surged to the top of opinion polls and tied with him a few days before the elections. 2004 VP poll protest In 2004, Senator Loren Legarda ran for vice president under the opposition banner but lost to administration bet Noli de Castro. She filed an electoral protest before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, which the body eventually junked in January 2008. In a 20-page resolution penned by Senior Justice Leonardo A. Quisumbing, the Supreme Court sitting as the PET said: “The pilot-tested revision of ballots or re-tabulation of the certificates of canvass would not affect the winning margin of [De Castro] in the final canvass of the returns, in addition to the ground of abandonment or withdrawal by reason of [Legarda’s] candidacy for, election and assumption of the office Senator of the Philippines." According to the PET, Legarda had effectively withdrawn her protest when she ran for the Senate contest in May 2007. The PET also said that Legarda "had not adequately and convincingly rebutted the presumption that as public documents, the Congress-retrieved [election return] ER copies, used for the proclamation of [De Castro] by the [National Board of Canvassers], are authentic and duly executed in the regular course of official business." For this year's elections, Legarda ran for vice president again but ranked only third in the final tally with 4,294,664 votes. — Jam Sisante/RSJ/KBK, GMANews.TV