SET dismisses Tolentino’s poll protest vs De Lima

According to De Lima’s camp on Thursday, April 11, the SET granted Tolentino’s motion seeking to withdraw his electoral protest against the lawmaker through its Notice of Resolution No. 16-142. (File photo: Francis Tolentino/Facebook)

The Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET) has junked the poll protest filed by former Presidential Political Affairs Adviser Francis Tolentino against Senator Leila De Lima whom he accused of cheating in the 2016 elections.

According to De Lima’s camp on Thursday, April 11, the SET granted Tolentino’s motion seeking to withdraw his electoral protest against the lawmaker through its Notice of Resolution No. 16-142. The document was dated February 21, 2019, but was only released on April 4.

It also granted the motion filed by De Lima to reveal to the public the results of the revision and appreciation of recount proceedings covering 319,228 ballots from 654 clustered precincts which were examined earlier by the Tribunal.

[READ: De Lima wants SET to disclose results of Tolentino’s poll protest vs her]

“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,” SET said.

SET also did not find any proof of alleged irregularities in the 2016 elections — which supposedly led to Tolentino’s defeat in the senatorial race — in the results of the initial determination of the concluded revision of pilot precincts.

“The results negated his allegations that pre-loaded SD cards were used or that his votes were not counted,” it noted.

“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.

Tolentino filed his poll protest against De Lima in October 2016 after the detained senator won the 12th Senate seat in the elections, while he landed on the 13th place.

He dropped his election protest, telling SET in a  motion dated January 3 that he has to give his “undivided attention” to his senatorial bid for the May 2019 elections.

[READ: Francis Tolentino drops poll protest vs. De Lima]

The former Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) chairman is running under the administration’s Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban).