MANILA, 5 June 2004 — Voting 9-4, the Supreme Court yesterday rejected a petition by the political opposition seeking to stop a panel in Congress from counting the votes for president and vice president in the May 10 elections.
The court said it will consider the petition but the count can proceed.
The camp of action movie star Fernando Poe Jr. has accused President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s administration of cheating in the May 10 election and is seeking to stop the count by a panel in Congress that is heavily stacked with her allies.
Poe’s allies want the entire Senate and House of Representatives to do the canvassing instead, but Arroyo’s allies said that would only lead to delays.
Unofficial results leaked by an election official show Arroyo beat Poe by a slim margin, but Filipinos are still waiting for confirmation nearly four weeks after they voted.
Political analysts say Poe’s camp is stalling to try to stir up popular anger about cheating, but the allegations had not produced the kind of fury that ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 and Joseph Estrada as president in 2001.
Members of Arroyo’s ruling coalition have said they are confident the winner of the presidency will be proclaimed before the current government must wrap up its term on June 30.
The justices gave Senate President Franklin Drilon and House Speaker Jose de Venecia until noon on Monday to submit comments.
“They don’t feel compelled to intervene,” said Ruben Carranza, a constitutional lawyer. “There is urgency, but it’s not enough to stop the canvassing in Congress.”
Carranza said he expected the court to rule first whether it has the jurisdiction to evaluate the vote-counting process.
Cheating is common in any election in the Philippines, but an independent watchdog and an association of Roman Catholic bishops said they saw no signs of systematic or widespread fraud.
Ignacio Bunye, Arroyo’s spokesman, welcomed the court decision denying the opposition’s plea for a restraining order.
“The opposition will not get away with this ploy to further delay the canvassing under the guise of raising constitutional issues,” he said in a statement.
But Rufus Rodriguez, a lawyer for the opposition, called the ruling a victory because the court agreed to hear the petition.
“Reason dictates that legislators should not continue with the canvassing by the committee,” he said. “It’s just a waste of time and people’s money.”
Rodriguez filed the petition on Wednesday asking the court to disband the 22-member panel and order all 248 members of Congress to examine the election returns.
De Venecia said on Thursday that Arroyo’s allies in Congress had allowed ample time for the opposition to debate and would now use their numbers to override objections by Poe’s supporters.
“Enough is enough,” he said. “It’s about time we give our people the chance to find out who won.”
All Ballot Boxes Opened
After nine days of debates and to the cheers of the gallery, Congress yesterday finally unsealed all the ballot boxes holding the answer to the question: Who will be proclaimed the country’s next president?
With the opening of the boxes and the breaking of the seals on the vote tallies, the 22-member joint committee set up by Congress in joint session began last night the canvass of the votes cast for president and vice-president in the May 10 elections.
“Mr. Speaker, it’s now the last two boxes,” Compostela Valley Rep. Manuel “Way Kurat” (No Fear) Zamora declared, mimicking the voice of a basketball official who announces that a game is now in its last two minutes. The crowd roared.
Hard-Working Congressman
The crowd also cheered as Zamora, who had assumed the task of carrying the ballot boxes from one part of the session hall to the table, where their padlocks were removed, brought in the last ballot box on his shoulders.
On Tuesday afternoon, Zamora broke the tense atmosphere in Congress during the canvassing of votes for president and vice president by volunteering to carry the ballot boxes to be opened from the rostrum to the middle of the session hall.
And in a gesture of appreciation, opposition Sen. Vicente “Tito” Sotto III gave Zamora a towel with the playful words “Best washes” scribbled on it.
At 5:25 p.m., the 223rd and last box containing the 176th certificate of canvass (CoCs) from San Juan was finally unsealed in the plenary session. Thus ended nine days of often tedious, sometimes fiery debates over the rules of the canvassing and the actual opening of the ballot boxes.
It took almost two hours to complete the opening of the last 15 ballot boxes.
It’s the “beginning of the railroading” of the canvassing of votes.
That was how opposition lawmakers reacted last night when the leadership of the joint session of Congress ignored their proposal not to suspend the plenary session while the actual canvassing was going on.
“We foresee a railroad network operating in the canvassing. I think that is what’s going to happen,” opposition Sen. Aquilino Pimentel told reporters. Asked whether the opposition would still participate in the canvassing then, Pimentel said: “We will assess our moves from day to day.”
Drilon immediately ordered the secretaries of the Senate and the House of Representatives to re-arrange the seats to give way to the canvassing committee that will tabulate the votes at the center of the session hall.
Leyte Rep. Carmen Cari stood to ask Speaker Jose de Venecia if an independent auditing firm would assist the committee.
De Venecia said the Philippine Institute of Certified Public Accountants (PICPA) had been asked to assist in the canvassing.
Accordingly, a team of four volunteer accountants will attend the canvassing to audit the count.
Deputy Speaker Raul Gonzalez, chair of the House panel in the joint committee, said the committee itself would tabulate the votes but the actual accounting would be done by the internal auditors of both houses of Congress.
“In other words, the PICPA volunteers will see to it that they are doing it properly. I suppose it will have a very strong suasion on everybody by lending its own credibility to the count,” he added.
When the committee starts the canvass, the plenary session is suspended. Lawmakers who are not in the committee are free to witness the canvassing but they cannot take part in its proceedings.
Sanlakas party-list Rep. Jose Virgilio Bautista asked that alternate and substitute committee members be provided with stenographic notes to keep them abreast of the situation. (Additional input from Reuters & Inquirer News Service)
