"What is with the delay in the recount?"
"What is with the delay in the recount?"
The protest filed by Ferdinand “Bongbong” R. Marcos, Jr. for a recount of votes to determine who actually won the vice presidential race has been pending since 2016. As of now, nearly half of the term for which the protestee has to serve as the elected vice president has been consumed.
The Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), chaired by a known henchman of the previous administration, has kept on delaying the case. One could well surmise it is bent in committing a travesty on the people’s mandate. The protestee can only wait in anguish as to when their living god would finally decide to finish the recount and declare who won in that election. The other party’s political capital for her inglorious career was the untimely death of her husband.
Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa is supposed to epitomize the judicial saying that “justice delayed is justice denied.” But as it is, this cabal whose preferential appointment was made possible by the circumstance of being a classmate by that ever–pretending-to-be-pious leader has unreasonably been sitting on the protest-recount. If decided after the term for the contested position has expired, that would spare the hypocritical justice from deciding the electoral protest by virtue of the case, having become moot and academic.
It was this justice who has the habit of talking about morality and honesty in public service, like what he said when he was made the speaker of a commencement exercise at the Ateneo College of Law. He always finds a way to put up a veneer to his premeditated plan to delay the case. In fact, the recalcitrance of this justice to sit on the case for such an unreasonable period of time is now being used by the lawyer of that other candidate as an achievement for which he should be voted to public office.
This lawyer is now trotting around the country telling the voters how he did it to commit an injustice against the majority of the Filipino voters as if to bluntly tell them how he enjoys the privilege of being under the protective winds of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and the electoral “bastonero” who determines the winners in our farcical democratic electoral exercise.
This lackluster lawyer is truly a master of dilatory tactic and is now begging before the unwary electorate to vote for him. In fact, if only the people could recall his record as an election lawyer, they would easily remember him as the favorite lawyer of parties facing protest for election cheating or fraud. He has become the favorite counsel for candidates and officials facing electoral protest involving cheating, fraud, or some form of electoral dishonesty or anomaly.
Surely, nobody would believe he is doing it for gratis et amore, voting for him now is like asking him to deliver them right to the doorstep of hell.
It is no longer a question of evidence of the numerous instances of electoral cheating, tampering and even blatant vandalism and destruction of votes under the custody of the Comelec that were exhibited and proven. How is the court supposed to stand as the mechanism that would concretize justice when it is the one blocking the disposition of the case?
As it is, the PET is the one doing everything to amend, bend and even substitute the rules laid down on how the electorate should be guided on how they will vote under the new system of computerized election. Alas, where can the Comelec overrule the Supreme Court to set aside an issue it decided about the oval shading of ballots to at 25 percent for the 2016 elections just to favor an overly ambitious candidate?
Even elementary students know that the issue of shading was not decided by the Supreme Court motu proprio but was raised to that tribunal to decide. Second, out of respect, the Comelec should have bowed down to that ruling of the Supreme Court for reasons of judicial order and precedence. Rather, the Comelec systematically disregarded the rules by shamelessly substituting their own rule to purposely put to a naught the electoral protest of Marcos vis-a-vis ensuring the victory of that candidate.
As independent observers would comment, the conduct of the PET is to exhibit its blind loyalty to the appointing power. In fact, PET is doing the worst case of shaming the self-styled vice-president. Everybody knows Leni Robredo lost in the 2016 election. Despite being heckled, Cagiuoa, as chairman of PET, insists on putting on the stilts to keep their puppet politically standing.
This is boldly asserted for it seems BBM was cheated not by about a million but two million votes. If truly Smartmatic’s cheating machine was computerized, the result would have been determined in less than an hour. But for the fact that they possibly made some juggling of votes in many provinces, to ridiculously surpass the votes of BBM by more than a million, it took them until daybreak to release their tally sheets indicating that Robredo won by more than a million to make her alleged victory decisive and discourage BBM from protesting.
This is asserted, for this column is inclined to suspect that PET would never allow BBM to win. For that to happen, the entire Liberal Party and its yellow supporters will perish. Their patrons led by the oligarchs, clerics, the neoliberal warmongers, and the ideologically retarded Makabayan will crumble. Robredo destroyed the entire apparatus of the hypocrites. Not one of them now dares to openly promise to safeguard a clean, fair and honest election because the people know they are unwanted residue of electoral cheating and fraud. Even the cleric and the nuns have become hilarious clowns fighting for his falsified cause.
The last New Year celebration hosted by the embassy of the People’s Republic of China held at Shangri-La Hotel in Makati, somewhat gave political signs how China assesses the situation here. Of the many public dignitaries it invited, including some Filipino-Chinese tycoons, is telling that China is giving importance to Marcos even if holds no elective or appointive position, believing he was elected by the people.
Moreover, even if he was not asked to join the important guests to go up the stage to be introduced, the emcee acknowledged his presence, which to my mind implies that China believes that Bongbong Marcos is the legitimate vice president. Even if we give it that China also invited Leni Robredo as a matter of protocol, she would nonetheless excuse herself. That means that once the protest case is decided, China is likely to extend immediate recognition to the one who will be proclaimed winner.
