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July 16, 2010
MANILA – It’s official: defeated vice presidential candidate Manuel Roxas II has formally filed an election protest against Vice President Jejomar Binay. Lawyers of Roxas filed the electoral protest filed before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) composed of Supreme Court justices.In his 102-page protest, Roxas asked the PET to conduct a manual revision of votes and order the immediate counting of some three million votes which the Commission on Elections (Comelec) did not count and canvassed for being stray or null votes.At the same time, Roxas also petitioned the tribunal to conduct a “comprehensive, system-wide forensic analysis and comparison of the country’s automated election system (AES) in a bid to en-sure the true will of the electorate.”
“Moving forward in the succeeding electoral exercises of this nation underscores the imperative to unmask
and purge the infirmities that plaque this fundamental democratic process,” Roxas said. He stressed that the certificates of canvass (CoCs) which were used to proclaim Binay, were not properly authenticated
as these failed to meet all legal requirements for the determination of authenticity and due execution of the
CoCs. He also revealed that the election results (ERs) used as basis to proclaim Binay did not show the actual votes for the position of vice president because of the high incidence of null votes totaling to
2,612,207 votes; the lowering of canvassing threshold in at least 145 clustered precincts nationwide; fraud, anomalies, irregularities and statistical improbabilities in certain clustered precints, particularly in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao; among others.
“As it stands, the anomalously high incidence of null misread votes is not only relevant but also crucial for the
vice-presidential contest, especially in light of the narrow margin between protestant and protestee,” Roxas
stressed. Binay was proclaimed the winner with a narrow margin of only 727,084 votes.
As to the statistical improbabilities in some clustered precints, he disclosed that 578 PCOS machines reported an average turnout of 97.85 percent in ARMM; in Kalinga, 33 PCOS machines reported a province-wide voter turnout of 98.47 percent; and in the Cordillera Administrative E Region (CAR), 44 PCOS machines had an average region wide voter turnout of 98.54 percent. Roxas also noted that there were 1,147 clustered precints where he received 10 votes or less, 688 or 60 percent came from ARMM. In these precints, 328 were from Lanao Del Sur and 251 from Maguindanao.
“The fact that all registered voters turned out to vote and even voted for the same candidate is a statistical improbability that points towards the conduct of fraud, anomalies, and irregularities in the conduct of elections in certain clustered precincts, particularly in the ARMM,” Roxas said.