The ways of losing candidates FRONTLINE Ninez Cacho-Olivares 06/07/2010

The ways of losing candidates

FRONTLINE Ninez Cacho-Olivares 06/07/2010 One shouldn’t begrudge Sen. Mar Roxas and his camp for making an issue over the so-called null votes, said to be both an overvote, a no vote ballot and a machine-unread vote. For that matter no one should begrudge a losing candidate for any position to make this an issue along with their claims of electronic fraud. At the same time, one shouldn’t get all upset over the insistence of Jojo Binay and his camp to object to the Roxas camp’s broiling over the issue of null votes. The reason is simple: If the results showed the reverse and favored Roxas, the Binay camp would have made an issue of this null vote. But as Roxas appears to be losing the race, this is expected from the Binay camp. Few, if any, of the losing candidates would want to go through an electoral protest, whether in the Comelec, the House, the Senate, or the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), which is the Supreme Court (SC). Apart from such moves that entail millions of pesos just for a review of the vote count, the fact is that as electoral protests go in this country, such protests are useless, since it takes forever for the respective bodies to declare a protestant the winner. More often than not, as evidenced in the very recent past, it takes some three years for the Comelec to reverse the victory of a governor, mayor or a lower office. By the time a reversal of decision is rendered by the Comelec, the “real” winner of the local race would not even be able to sit, as another election has been scheduled. Cases in point are the resolved cases of the Bulacan governorship where the losing candidate was declared the winner, while declaring Jon-jon Mendoza as having lost the polls. But up till today, Mendoza sits as Bulacan governor, since there was a status quo ante order granted by the high court.... MORE     Source:  The Daily Tribune URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100607com2.html

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