Comelec can’t undo proclamation of Arroyo as ’04 winner

MANILA, Philippines—The Commission on Elections on Tuesday said it could no longer undo the proclamation of President Gloria-Macapagal Arroyo as winner of the 2004 presidential elections even if it were proven that the results of the polls were rigged.

“We have no jurisdiction to annul any proclamation. In the first place, that’s a presidential election. She was already proclaimed,” Comelec chair Sixto Brillantes Jr. said, referring to the Congress which acts, in joint session, as the sole National Board of Canvassers for the presidential race.

Also, Brillantes said any annulment would serve no other practical purpose since Arroyo has already finished her term while her main challenger, movie actor Fernando Poe Jr., who claimed to have been cheated, was already deceased.

“If Poe was found out [to] have won, how can we proclaim him when he’s already dead? So there’s no issue for us [in Comelec] with regards to 2004,” the Comelec chair.

“Maybe for historical [reason] or [for the sake of] posterity. At least we’d all know that Ms. Arroyo did not win, if that’s really true,” Brillantes replied when asked about the benefit of a determination that the 2004 presidential election results were faulty.

However, the chair said that until the allegations of former Maguindanao provincial elections supervisor Lintang Bedol and suspended regional governor Zaldy Ampatuan about election cheating were substantiated, claims that Poe won and Arroyo lost were “all speculative.”

Senator Francis Escudero earlier proposed the creation of a fact-finding body that will determine if there was massive cheating in the 2004 presidential election. He said Poe could be posthumously declared winner of that election if it is proven that Arroyo used her position to rig the election.

Poe’s supporters even suggested that a portrait of the late actor be placed among the portraits of the presidents in Malacañang. Some even pressed for the revocation of the retirement benefits of Arroyo, who is currently a congresswoman from Pampanga.

Brillantes was Poe’s counsel in 2004 presidential race. Poe filed an election protest against Arroyo but he died of a stroke before it could be resolved.

In 2005, the so-called “Hello Garci” erupted which involved the disclosure of alleged tapped conversations between Arroyo and a Comelec commissioner about how to rig the 2004 election results.

In Philippine history, the national legislature annulled a presidential proclamation only once.

On Mar. 24, 1986, the Regular Batasang Pambansa passed a resolution nullifying the proclamation of Ferdinand Marcos and Arturo Tolentino as winners of the presidential and vice presidential snap elections in February that year.

The legislature ruled that Corazon Aquino and Salvador Laurel were the real winners of the snap elections. By that time, however, Marcos was already in exile while Aquino has been sworn president following the bloodless Edsa People Power Revolution.