Fighting a formidable battle
On Wednesday last week, we got word that the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) had denied our petition to intervene in the counter protest of Vice President Leni Robredo to the electoral protest filed by the defeated candidate Bongbong Marcos, by giving directly to the PET the amount she needs to deposit for the process to proceed, as required by the PET Rules.
You see, VP Robredo, being a government official, is not allowed to receive donations from citizens. But we know she is hard put to raise an additional P7.4 million to complete the P15 million she is required to pay as deposit to the PET. So, we pursued what we think is a creative way to help her meet the expense. The money we raised would not be given to her, but directly to the PET.
We are Nina Lim Yuson who founded Museo Pambata; Mel Alonzo, former CEO of Pagibig Fund; the singer Celeste Legaspi; Karina Bolasco who heads the Ateneo Press; former DSWD Secretary Dinky Soliman; and myself, a former member of the Commission on Human Rights — a.k.a. the Formidable Six, all members of The Outstanding Women in the Nation’s Service (TOWNS) who decided to do something, well, formidable, to defend our ballots and uphold our democracy.
Our petition was denied and the PET did not give us a reason for the denial. We felt like we were swatted away perfunctorily, like a pesky mosquito.
Our petition was really a shot in the dark, but it was groundbreaking. The arguments we posed had not been brought up before. In fact, voters have never bothered to protect their ballots this way in a recount. Until we bought up our willingness to help our candidate, a participant in an electoral protest was largely on her own. She raised the money required and fought the battle alone. But in our petition for intervention, we argued that we were doing so in the exercise of our sovereign authority to choose our leaders and protect the outcome of the 2016 elections.
We launched Piso Para sa Laban ni Leni to enable citizens to participate in our initiative. But we clarified that this being a test case, if our petition is denied, whatever we collected would go to VP Leni’s Angat Buhay program for the poor.
Our initiative resonated with the public beyond our expectations. Leni Robredo’s laylayan stood out to express their gratitude and appreciation.
A waiter shared his P20 tip, a jeepney driver parted with P200 of his daily earnings, a tricycle driver gave P100, a jobless man contributed P10,000, a young woman shared what she was saving for a vacation, and a family raised P5,000 among its members. A retiree gave part of her monthly pension, and a heart patient apologetically gave “only” P200 because she had other health expenses. A woman lined up for an hour in a crowded bank, and one had to take a boat from his island home to the town to deposit his modest contribution. Plastic water bottles and jars filled with one peso coins were submitted by communities that wanted to be part of the effort. There are countless other stories.
There were also those who contributed large amounts that helped spike our daily balance, and to them, we owe a big Thank You.
In less than six weeks, we collected P6.5 million in pesos, dollars and euros that came in via bank deposits, cash transfers, GCash, remittances, and PayPal. There were those who handed us cash in bills and coins in jars and water bottles, and slowly, the amount grew until last week, at around the time the PET released its verdict, we hit P6.5 million.
It is for these fervent and generous contributors that we are not simply rolling over and accepting the PET’s brush-off. As our legal counsel, Atty. Purificacion S. Bartolome-Bernabe, who goes by the nickname of Pingki, said: “While we respect the decision of the PET, we cannot ignore the passion with which the public has joined this crusade.”
It is for this reason that the Formidable Six, representing our 25,000 contributors, decided to avail of the remedies granted by law by filing a motion for reconsideration before the PET.
Says our lawyer Pingki, “We shall set forth arguments not previously raised and build on points already stated in the petition. We can do no less for the 25,000 citizens who have journeyed with us in this cause.”
Another suntok sa buwan? Call it what you will. We have been told that we should just give up on our quest because we have “no legal personality” to engage the PET in this case. But we assert that we do have legal and material interest in this case because we are giving voice to 25,000 people who want their votes protected and thus have interest in the outcome of the case.
Tuloy ang laban.
Meanwhile, we have stopped the fund-raising, as we hope and pray for a favorable response from the PET to our motion for reconsideration.
