Too early to claim victory

“It is clear that Leni’s claims of poll victory are just too premature with her repetition of her victory almost daily — perhaps to generate public opinion of her being the real winner in the vice-presidential race.

If, as the Leni Robredo camp insists that the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) poll figures justifies her claim of a vice-presidential poll victory, why then does her camp reiterate its call to the PET to junk the election protest as it claims that the numbers of her rival, Bongbong Marcos, failed to show substantial recovery of votes in the three pilot provinces?

Romulo Macalintal, Robredo’s legal counsel, was quoted as saying that the data culled from the PET’s resolution on 15 October, Robredo gained 17,520 votes from the three pilot provinces that were chosen by Marcos who had recovered 2,427 votes, which, to Leni’s lawyer, is proof that his client won in the vote recount and gained substantial recovery.

Moreover, Macalintal still insists that the PET did not dismiss Associate Justice Benjamin Caguioa’s ponencia, despite the clear move of the PET to “set aside,” a more polite phrase to describe Caguioa’s report, even when it means one and the same thing, since voting 11-2, it called on the two parties to file their comments within a 20-day period.

Macalintal stressed that the figures “prove that Robredo won in the recount of votes and gained substantial recovery from the three pilot provinces Marcos chose for the initial determination of the merits of his protest pursuant to Rule 65 of the PET Rules.”

On what is Macalintal basing his claims of victory? The recount figures taken from the Caguioa report that come from the Leni camp revisors?

But are the Robredo revisors’ figures the right ones, especially since what is fact is that the PET, in dismissing the Caguioa report and revised figures, decided to release to the camps of Marcos and Robredo the report on the revision and appreciation of ballots in the three pilot provinces and required them to submit their comments.

It’s fairly obvious that the Tribunal, in setting aside Caguioa’s ponencia that called for the outright dismissal of the Marcos protest, failed to get the tribunal’s vote, which apparently, the PET majority thumbed down. It instead called for the two parties to comment on these revised figures from Caguioa’s report.

It is clear that Leni’s claims of poll victory are just too premature with her repetition of her victory almost daily — perhaps to generate public opinion of her being the real winner in the vice-presidential race. But until the PET, with its majority, decides on the issue, and only after the same Tribunal says that Marcos had lost and Leni’s victory has been affirmed, can she and her camp claim victory and of her being the successor of President Duterte while he stays in power and position.

It is certain that Marcos has his own camp’s revisors’ vote count, as well as his and his camp’s claims of massive electoral fraud, anomalies and irregularities, such as the pre-shaded ballots, preloaded Secure Digital cards, misreading of ballots, malfunctioning vote counting machines and an “abnormally high” unaccounted votes/undervotes, which Marcos and his lawyers have to prove.

Even during the days of the vote recount, it was already evident that vote irregularities were being published in the media, including clear proof of massive fraud being committed that benefitted Robredo, which could be the reason Caguioa quickly called for a media gag.

To this day, neither Smartmatic nor the Commission on Elections has credibly explained to the electorate the reason of the vote count blackout throughout the night that succeeded in pouring millions of votes to the column of Robredo.

Still, there is no reason for Leni’s and her lawyer to fear a delay from the Tribunal while their comments are called for and submitted to the PET. After all, if she claims that she won the vice presidency “overwhelmingly,” why are she and her lawyer so impatient as to ask the PET to dismiss the protest? To this day, Leni still functions as the country’s vice president, not Marcos. It is she, as vice president, and not Marcos, who gets invited by foreign organizations for speaking engagements, which forums she uses to attack the Malacañang tenant.

Besides, the nation deserves to know whether their sovereign will again has been thwarted. It really is time for the country to be rid of massive vote fraud as we elect electoral cheats who are not the choice of the voters.

But perhaps Leni and her yellows want to make sure that she is declared the true elected vice president just in case Duterte kicks the bucket, if only to ensure that she takes over, and for her and the yellows return to power and position before 2022. They know for certain that in a presidential election, Leni won’t make it to the presidency and again, there will be a repeat of the 2019 senatorial polls where not one yellow senatorial candidate won a seat — or a yellow presidential bet is expected to win.

If the PET majority affirms Len’s victory, the Filipinos will accept it. But will the PET affirm her victory after the comments from the two parties are ruled upon?