‘Drug money made Leila win’

Former MMDA Chairman Francis Tolentino confers on supporters beofre he attend the preliminary hearing on the electoral protest he file against Senator Leila De Lima in Supreme Court, Manila.INQUIRER PHOTO / RICHARD A. REYES

Defeated senatorial candidate Francis Tolentino yesterday told the Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET) that Sen. Leila de Lima used “drug money” in her campaign to win the 12th Senate seat in the May 9 balloting.

The former chair of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) finished 13th in the senatorial race with nearly 1.3 million votes behind De Lima. Tolentino appeared at the preliminary conference of the nine-member SET on his electoral protest against the former justice secretary.

Tolentino was roundly criticized for sponsoring a lewd show of the girl group “Playgirls” in Laguna in October 2015. He was supposed to join De Lima in the senatorial slate of the then ruling Liberal Party, but the incident prompted him to cut his ties from the party of his close friend, former President Aquino.

“One of the issues we answered was the reply of De Lima that she did not have money for the campaign,” Tolentino told reporters.

He also claimed that the manipulation of the vote count for the senatorial race was committed during the transmission of the results.

While admitting that De Lima’s lead over him was substantial, he argued that the total number of votes they garnered should not matter as he was questioning how the election results were transmitted.

“That’s not the issue here,” he said. “It’s about the electronic transmission… because it was possible that there was double transmission… It’s not about the number (of votes) or the (margin) of her lead.”

He noted that senators who won were separated only by about 800,000 votes.

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