The people have spoken, and the clear winner is the 71-year-old Davao City mayor Rodrigo Duterte who impressed many when he called for healing and unity –which should put his detractors to shame. Also a class act was Senator Grace Poe who lived up to her name, graciously conceding early when it became apparent that Duterte’s margin was too wide for anyone to catch up with. Roxas, who was the winner in all the surveys floated by recently formed survey firm D’ Strafford—has also conceded.
The vice presidential race, however, is another story as the tightly contested race continues to be a source of anxiety especially among supporters of Senator Bongbong Marcos, with suspicions of cheating due to a series of funny “incidents.” Loud in the chatter is the curious halting of the count in bailiwicks of Leni Robredo and the decision of the Comelec BEI (board of election inspectors) to just transmit the results in the morning instead of continuing the count Monday night with Marcos still leading by almost a million votes.
By 3:30 a.m. Tuesday, Marcos’s margin has been effectively whittled down to nil. According to sources, the 3:00 a.m. window was supposedly the “magic hour”—you know, magic like abra cadabra and hocus-pcos—oops, we meant pocus. We also received reports about the curious discrepancies in the tally. In the report at CNN, Robredo’s total votes as of 4:59 a.m. Tuesday was 13,014,447 while Escudero’s was 4,486,335. By 5:30 a.m., Robredo’s total reached 13,050,115 while Escudero’s number of votes amazingly went down to 4,449,913.
You do the math, and you would see that the unexplained 36,422 reduction in Escudero’s votes after 30 minutes is almost the same as the increase in Robredo’s votes of 35,668. The same anomaly was monitored in the reportage of GMA that showed Robredo with 12,993,399 at 4:40 a.m. while Escudero has 4,479,913. By 5:30 a.m., Robredo had 13,050,115 while Escudero again had a reduced tally of 4,449,038. Typo errors? From two different networks? It looks like some kind of +-40,000 operation was in progress.
Our more nosey buddies also say that the votes for Escudero and Cayetano have remained static, with the latter’s numbers from Mindanao returns curiously low when he should be doing well in those areas. And what about those reports of pre-shaded ballots in ARMM?
Some would argue, however, that there was no cheating or manipulation because “PCOS, eh” and Duterte still emerged as the top candidate for the presidential race. But we know that his margin is too wide, which would make it impossible for dagdag-bawas to be mounted against the avalanche of votes he received. It’s a different story however in a tightly contested race such as the one we are seeing for the position of vice president. Let’s remember, he is a Marcos and the president is an Aquino who has made no bones about doing everything in his power—including use the office of the president—to thwart the young senator from winning the VP race—because that would have been such a big slap on his face which we know must be stinging now with the victory of Duterte as his successor. So hocus-pocus? Your guess is as good as ours.
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