PET ORDERS LEGARDA TO PAY P3.38M AS DE CASTRO ASKS TO SPEED UP RECOUNT OR CASE TO LAST TILL 2013

12 March  2006                   

The Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) directed former Senator Loren Legarda to "make a full cash deposit of P3,382,000.00" and to comment on Vice President Noli “Kabayan” De Castro's motion to create more revision teams to expedite the resolution of her election protest.

In a one-page resolution of February 28, the PET gave Legarda a non-extendible period of ten (10) days to deposit the said amount and a non-extendible period of five (5) days to comment on De Castro's motion for additional revision teams.

De Castro, through his lawyers Romulo Macalintal and Alberto Agra argued that at the rate the revision of ballots from protested precincts is going on, it would take until 2013 to terminate just the revision phase of Legarda's protest. Hence, they moved the court to create 25, 50 or 75 additional revision teams in addition to the existing 25 revision committees currently undertaking the revision and recount of ballots.

De Castro alleged that 124,404 precincts from 44 provinces and cities were protested by Legarda where she asked for the revision and recount of ballots.

As of the filing of his motion, the PET had just revised 36% of the 7,744 Legarda's protested precincts
from the Province of Cebu, which is one of her pilot protested precincts. The PET has yet to gather or collect the ballot boxes from the Provinces of Pampanga and Maguindanao, the two other pilot protested precincts which consist of about 10,000 precincts.

"Thus, based on this estimation, the revision of ballots from Cebu, Maguindanao and Pampanga would last until December 2006 and the revision of ballots from the remaining 41 protested provinces or cities could be finished possibly in seven years from now, or in December 2013", De Castro's motion alleged.

The De Castro camp also noted that since the case is still pending, the 124,404 boxes containing the ballots from the 124,404 precincts could not be used for the 2007 elections.

"If not resolved in time for the said elections, the Commission on Elections would incur an additional expense of close to P186 million of people's money since one ballot box is estimated to cost at least one thousand pesos each" Macalintal said.

“Thus, there is a need for these additional revision committees to greatly help in resolving the apparently baseless and frivolous protest," Macalintal said.

Macalintal also maintains that the early resolution of the electoral protest would thwart the tactic of the
opposing camp of casting a cloud of doubt on the legitimacy of Vice President De Castro's victory in the 2004 election.