Besides ethics complaint, Leila faces poll protest

MANILA, Philippines - Looks like Sen. Leila De Lima’s trials will not be over anytime soon.

With President Duterte apparently making it his mission to take out De Lima as a senator alongside his campaign to rid the country of illegal drugs, a certain Abelardo de Jesus has filed a complaint against De Lima before the Senate Committee on Ethics.

The complaint will be taken up when senators meet next week. 

The Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET) is also set to tackle an electoral protest filed against De Lima by former Metropolitan Manila Development Authority chairman Francis Tolentino, who finished 13th place behind De Lima in last May’s senatorial election.

Senate President Pro Tempore Franklin Drilon, a member of the SET, confirmed that the tribunal has met once already and would meet again on Oct. 6 to take up the complaint of Tolentino.

“There will be preliminary conference on Oct. 6 so that we can summarize everything, including definition of the issues,” Drilon said.

Drilon said the target is to hand down a decision before the end of the 17th Congress.

De Lima was proclaimed the 12th winning senator by the Commission on Elections sitting as the National Board of Canvassers with a total vote of 14,144,070.

Tolentino came in at 13th place with a total of 12,811,098 or a difference of 1,332,972 votes.

An attempt by Tolentino to secure an injunction on the proclamation before the Supreme Court failed, which paved the way for De Lima to be proclaimed.

In his complaint before the SET, Tolentino questioned the results in 60,537 local precincts and 74 overseas voting precincts. 

“These are manufactured, sham and false results, which if compared with the actual ballots, will not tally with the transmitted totals,” according to the complaint of Tolentino.

“The acts of fraud committed to rig the past elections were never as widespread as those committed to electronically manipulate the recently-concluded 2016 automated NLE (national and local elections),” it added. 

Among the issues raised by the camp of Tolentino were the alleged presence of pre-shaded ballots and precincts with 100 percent voter turnout, which they noted was not only a statistical improbability but also impossible.

Running as an independent candidate, Tolentino said that he was allied with Duterte.

His camp also repeatedly cited the alleged endorsement given to him by the Iglesia ni Cristo (INC), a religious group that supposedly votes as a bloc during elections.

Tolentino’s camp noted that De Lima, who ran under the Liberal Party, was not endorsed by the INC. 

“Had these manufactured, padded, falsified and fraudulent vote totals been discovered, removed or corrected, and Tolentino’s true votes reflected in the registered and transmitted totals, Tolentino would have definitely and easily beaten De Lima in the recently concluded senatorial elections, placing, at the very least, as the 12th winning senator,” the complaint stated.

Drilon said that more or less 1.3 million votes were being nullified by Tolentino in his electoral protest. 

The SET is chaired by Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio. Its members are Associate Justices Teresita Leonardo-De Castro and Arturo Brion and Sens. Drilon, Cynthia Villar, Grace Poe, Nancy Binay, Richard Gordon and Antonio Trillanes IV.