Tolentino poll complaint vs de Lima dismissed
Credit to Author: BERNADETTE E. TAMAYO| Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2019 04:38:38 +0000
THE Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET) dismissed the electoral protest filed in 2016 by defeated senatorial candidate Francis Tolentino against Sen. Leila de Lima.
Tolentino cried fraud that led to his defeat in the 2016 senatorial elections.
De Lima won over Tolentino by over 1.33 million votes and took the 12th and last Senate seat in the 17th Congress.
The senator’s camp said that the tally of votes covering 319,228 ballots from 654 precincts during the revision process resulted in an increase of 895 votes for de Lima and only 702 for Tolentino, or a net gain of 193 votes in De Lima’s favor.
In Resolution 16-142 dated February 21, but released only on April 4, SET granted Tolentino’s motion withdrawing his electoral protest against de Limaa.
SET also granted de Lima’s motion to make public the results of the recount proceedings covering 319,228 ballots from 654 clustered precincts.
“The motion for withdrawal of the election protest manifests the desistance of the Protestant (Tolentino) from pursuing the case. There being no law or jurisprudence that prevents its approval, the Tribunal hereby grants the same,” the resolution read.
“The Tribunal, in the exercise of its discretion, (also) opted to release the results of revision and appreciation in the pilot precincts as these proceedings had already been completed,” the 31-page resolution added.
SET said that the results of the initial determination of the concluded revision of pilot precincts did not show any proof of alleged irregularities or fraud in the 2016 polls that purportedly led to the defeat of Tolentino.
“The results negated his allegations that pre-loaded SD cards were used or that his votes were not counted,” the tribunal said.
“After conducting the [barcode matching and vote matching proceedings] on 532 clustered precincts, it was confirmed that the barcodes of the actual paper ballots correspond to the barcodes of the picture images, and that ‘the votes’ appearing on the actual ballots and picture images were the votes that were counted by the VCMs (vote counting machines),” it added.
In his motion dated January 3, Tolentino told SET that he “voluntarily” withdrew his electoral protest against de Lima to give his “undivided attention” in campaigning for the senatorial post in the May 13 midterm polls.
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