Friday, January 25, 2008 Ledesma: Loren's lament By Jun Ledesma Sunbursts
SEVERAL columns ago, I wrote about the eerie and unusual silence of the unusually garrulous opposition on issues involving election fraud. This manic garrulity is especially true when the penchant is the present administration. I recalled that months after the Supreme Court convened a Presidential Electoral Tribunal to hear the complaint of then defeated vice presidential candidate Loren Legarda there was practically no audible comments on the progress of the PET's appreciation of individual ballots and certificates of canvass that was being questioned by the Legarda camp.
I recalled too, that before the filing of the complaint, there was this incident where the opposition's watchdogs barged into an apartment where they claimed to unearthed various elections paraphernalia, which purportedly were fake. I told myself that the documents maybe indeed spurious but I had doubts whether those were used in the canvassing and tabulations of votes.
A regional coordinator of the opposition during that electoral contest confessed to me for example that they resorted to printing fake Certificates of Canvass, which they filled up at random and used the same as supporting documents to claim their allowance. There's some strange twist to this but I will skip that.
In the course of the PET's appreciation of election documents there was nothing that the justices saw to give credence to Legarda's allegation of fraud. From the start of the hearing until the time when PET handed down the verdict, which threw out the plaint of Loren, there was not even a pipsqueak from the feisty senator and her colleagues in the opposition. Every minute of the day, the opposition was searching every nook and cranny to prove their thesis that they were cheated. "Hello Garci" was overused and General Esperon was unperturbed. Just about the actionable issue was the "fertilizer scam" but even that can hardly stir the public or the "masa" to go to the streets.
Had there been any bit of proof of electoral fraud, Legarda and the political opposition including the cabal of Hyatt 10, Black and White Movement and the radical left combined, would not have wasted a second to shout to the world that there were pieces of evidence to prove electoral fraud. But they were silent.
Loren should have accepted the verdict of the PET. Raving about it will neither help her nor the opposition. She cannot continue with her slur on the justices like she did with the Comelec commissioners.
After all is said and done, Vice President Noli de Castro is not the only victor in this case. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is the direct beneficiary. And she is celebrating. She knew too well that as the justices were scrutinizing every ballot and CoC it cannot be negated that the opposition battery of lawyers were looking with eagle eye the results of canvass of votes cast on the presidential bets. The verdict is victory for Noli, it is a celebration for GMA.
