E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVA
DEMAREE J.B. RAVA
If only for truth
Sunday, 08 08, 2004
A paid hack is querying why Fernando Poe, Jr. and Loren Legarda filed their Protest at all, given what she surmises to be the improbability and hopelessness of ever getting a true accounting of the people’s vote. Obviously, her wonderment is premised on her being blind and dumb to the fact that massive and widespread electoral fraud, anomalies and irregularities, in patent and flagrant violation of election laws and applicable electoral rules were perpetrated and committed prior to, during, and after the May 10, 2004 elections.
And it is not even true, as this hack claims, that even their staunchest supporters have been discouraging Poe and Legarda from wasting their time. This claim, obviously, is a none-too-subtle way of denigrating the merits of the Protest.
The deaf and dumb hack would make us believe that it must be terribly lonely for Poe and Legarda out there. To be nobody but themselves in a world populated by spin doctors who are doing their best night and day to make them, Poe and Legarda, think that everybody else has abandoned them. It is the hardest fight any political being can fight and never stop fighting - knowing that you were outmaneuvered in the battle in a war that you would have certainly won.
The war, it seems, is not over yet for Poe and Legarda. The Protests filed separately by them are complete in all respects, in form and substance, and crafted so as to make it plain for all to see the truth in what their lawyers were harping on during the national canvass by both houses of Congress: that the correct results are in the election returns (ER), not in the certificates of canvass.
Poe claims in his Protest that “precinct results (were) correctly reflected in the ER but erroneously tampered/transferred to subsequent canvass documents.” He cites seven provinces, one city and seven municipalities, involving 10,554 precincts.
A very interesting example is the municipal certificate of canvass of Tipo-Tipo in the province of Basilan, which indicated 4,309 votes for Poe and 13,136 votes for his opponent. A verification made of the ER from all 100 precincts in that municipality, however, shows the following results: Poe: 10,033 votes; GMA only 4,302 votes.
For lack of space, we shall cite only these samples of clustered precincts pointed to us by lawyers Rufus Rodriguez and Sixto Brillantes, thus:
FPJ GMA
Prct ER/ SOV ER/ SOV
016A 132/019 019/131
017A 109/089 008/109
027A 159/011 001/159
046A 096/000 010/100
048A 104/104 041/191
052A 109/062 038/089
075A 135/017 027/135
111A 120/040 025/121
115A 132/009 000/150
A similar manipulation was perpetrated against Legarda in Tipo-Tipo, thus:
LOREN NOLI
Prct ER/SOV ER/SOV
012A 113/073 038/020
014A 143/119 011/038
033A 177/144 000/030
036A 195/140 000/011
049A 158/132 007/024
075A 138/120 030/030
076A 137/112 032/038
080A 178/129 000/006
088A 152/084 011/011
Clearly, the results had been altered, distorted and manipulated during the process of transposition and in the course of transferring the true and actual results shown in the ER to the tabulated statement of votes by precinct and the subsequent transposition to the municipal certificate of canvas, which were finally transferred to the provincial certificate of canvas.
Recall, if you will, that at the national canvass the automatic answer to the repeated plea for an examination of the ERs was: “Bring that matter to the presidential electoral tribunal!.” Now that the protest has been filed, Poe and Legarda will finally be able to lay bare what they have always claimed to be the truth.
Poe and Legarda have their copies of the ERs. But for purposes of their electoral protest, the ERs inside the boxes on deposit at the Batasan Complex in Quezon City will be used. It is well for the Tribunal, then, to take the necessary precautionary measure to protect and preserve the integrity and safety of all the boxes containing the ERs submitted to Congress.
The whole nation knows the truth is in those ERs and in the ballots. The prospects of Poe and Legarda being proclaimed the real winners in the May 10, 2004, election are all too real, but the protestees, with their filing of their respective counter-protest, have put a divertive damper on this hot issue, effectively prolonging the process, by their own reckoning, to eternity. This damper includes the nuisance issue of citizenship, which the intervenors had better not press, lest the complete truth about the fabricated documents with the value of a cypher is also laid bare.
The truth is out there. When they open those boxes of election returns and ballots, they will surely and certainly trip over the truth.
And therein lies my fear that most of them, whoever they are, begrimed and repelled by the enormity of the truth laid bare, would rather not embrace its totality and, instead, simply pick over it, selecting what is convenient for their self-interests and discarding the unwanted, incriminatory items, and proceed as if nothing had happened.
In a supposedly enlightened, democratic society, ’tis a pity that we cannot vent our frustrations as Cornelius Vanderbilt could, who once said, “You have undertaken to cheat me. I won’t sue you, for the law is too slow. I’ll ruin you,” So now, we will just have to accept that if the wheels of the Tribunal grind ever too slow, it will be the ruin of us all.
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