‘Kabayan’ agrees to Loren request

Vice President Noli de Castro gave in yesterday to former senator Loren Legarda’s petition before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) to use election returns instead of ballots as the basis for a recount of votes in last year’s vice presidential race.

Lawyer Jesse Andres, De Castro’s chief of staff, said he and election lawyers Romulo Macalintal and Armando Marcelo have discussed with De Castro the steps requested by Legarda.

"We are certain that the Vice President was not involved in any electoral fraud," he said.

Andres urged Legarda to pursue all available legal remedies to recover the election returns (ERs) seized by police in a raid last week if she indeed believes that the alleged tampered election materials are of any legal use to her.

"Needless to say, her malicious accusations are uncalled for and unfair," he said in a statement.

Under the Constitution, Andres said, the proper forum for Legarda’s election protest should be the PET.

Meanwhile, Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. asked Legarda yesterday to deposit more than P4 million to the PET as compensation for the team of ballot revisers.

During yesterday’s closed-door second preliminary conference of Legarda’s electoral protest, Davide asked Legarda’s lawyer Sixto

Brillantes if his client was prepared to consider increasing her initial deposit of P4,084,500.

The current low rate of P100 and P120 per reviser and head reviser for each ballot box will encourage only a few to take on the task of recounting the ballot returns, he added.

The PET will be ruling on the retrieval of ballot boxes, but no date has yet been set.

In response, Brillantes said Legarda is willing to have her initial deposit exclusively applied toward whatever expenses are necessary for the first aspect of her protest, seeking to correct "manifest errors" on the election returns.

Legarda was willing to accept any additional deposit that the PET may require for the second aspect of her protest to proceed, he added.

The second aspect of Legarda’s protest involves the revision of ballots.

Last June 30, Legarda partially deposited a total of P4,084,500 with the PET to cover the first and second aspects of her protest.

Brillantes had sought the second conference after objecting to the "dilatory" tactics of De Castro’s lawyers during the first preliminary conference, when De Castro sought the dismissal of Legarda’s electoral protest.

During the first preliminary conference, Brillantes stressed the urgency of immediately starting the ballot recount to determine the true results of the 2004 vice presidential election.

In a statement, Legarda said the PET yesterday rejected De Castro’s motion to dismiss her electoral protest.

Legarda said the PET also gave due course to her petition for the transfer of the ballot boxes used in the 2004 elections to the Supreme Court.

The PET must have custody of the ballots to be able to start recounting and retabulating votes in areas that she had identified in her protest, Legarda added.

However, De Castro said he did not understand why Legarda bothered to file an electoral protest before the PET, when she has instead sought "trial by publicity" to question and undermine the PET’s authority.

"It is clear by the way she has been pushing a trial by publicity of her protest that she intends to undermine the PET’s capability to resolve the case without bias," he said in Filipino.

"I hope Loren would respect the jurisdiction and power of justice. She is doing an injustice to the Filipino people by not letting the constitutional process work to find the truth."

De Castro reaffirmed his "firm" commitment to undertake and support steps for the speedy resolution of the electoral protest against him.

In his weekly radio program "Para Sa’yo ...Bayan" last Aug. 13, De Castro said he would no longer respond when asked to comment on Legarda’s ongoing allegations against him.

He challenged Legarda to let the PET decide on the credibility of witness Segundo Tabayoyong, retired National Bureau of Investigation Questioned Documents Division chief, who will reportedly testify on Legarda’s behalf.

"Let her bring Tabayoyong before the PET," he said.

"I didn’t cheat and I was not obsessed with becoming vice president. This should be proven in the PET. It’s for the PET to say if he’s credible and it’s the one to decide... So she must prove Tabayoyong’s credibility before a proper forum, not in the media."

De Castro has accused Legarda of resorting to "trial by publicity" instead of allowing the PET, as the proper and legal venue, to decide on her electoral protest.

Earlier, he denied reports that he was behind the raid of Tabayoyong’s rented apartment in a subdivision in San Mateo, Rizal last week.

De Castro said he had yet to discuss with his lawyers whether to question how and why Tabayoyong came to be in possession of the election materials.

Asked if he personally knows Taboyoyong, De Castro said he only heard about his name after reports came out that his apartment was raided by the police.

"Never, even the family name, I have never heard since I was born," he said.

Legarda said the issue of succession to the presidency has become imperative because of the growing clamor for President Arroyo’s resignation.

She filed her electoral protest against De Castro 14 months ago, in tandem with her running mate, the late actor Fernando Poe Jr.

Legarda said her electoral protest remains the only legal means to determine who really won in the presidential and vice presidential race last year.

During last year’s canvassing of the certificates of canvass by the House of Representatives acting as the National Board of

Canvassers, the opposition strongly objected to what they claimed were falsified CoCs, and presented evidence of massive electoral fraud, she added.

However, the administration-dominated Congress merely "noted" the opposition’s objection and proceeded with the canvassing.

Legarda also denounced the confiscation by the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) of some documentary evidence of electoral fraud being kept by Tabayoyong in what she called an "illegal raid in violation of the human and civil rights of Tabayoyong."

Brillantes said the purpose of the raid was to suppress evidence of massive electoral fraud in the presidential and vice presidential elections last year.