Supreme Court declares election protest as ‘moot and academic’.
The Supreme Court dismissed the electoral protest filed by Former Interior and Trade Secretary Manuel “Mar” Roxas against Former Vice-President Jejomar Binay, saying it is ‘moot and academic.
The protest was filed in 2010 when Roxas and Binay faced off in the vice-presidential race. Roxas, who was running mate of former President Benigno Aquino III in that year’s national polls, filed an electoral protest questioning the results of the elections declaring Binay as Vice-President.
Null votes were not counted because the ballots were incorrectly shaded or because more than one oval was shaded for an elective position.
Roxas also requested the PET to order an independent forensic examination of 26,000 compact flash cards used in the May polls, as well as the source code of the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines.
“Courts refrain from deciding on moot cases because any decision would have no practical purpose,” the high court said, in a statement read by SC spokesperson Theodore Te on Tuesday.
The SC, which sits as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, also dismissed the counter-protest filed by Binay against Roxas.
The high court explained that as Leni Robredo, who prevailed over rival Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. in a similarly controversial election, had already assumed her position as the country’s new Vice-President, “the tenure of the office being contested by Roxas and Binay had expired.”
The court maintains that the two parties had also failed to express their continued interest in pursuing the case, and also both ran for President in the 2016 polls.
Roxas asked the SC to consider close to P3 million null votes, or votes with incorrectly-shaded ballots, which were not counted by the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines, as these could erase Binay’s 727,084-vote margin.
Roxas also asked the SC to order an independent forensic examination of 26,000 compact flash cards used in the May 2010 polls, as well as the source code of the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines.