The May 9 national and local elections would likely be a “cleaner” process than in 2016 because an impeached official, like fugitive Andres Bautista, is not sitting as Commission on Elections (Comelec) chair, according to UniTeam senatorial candidate Harry Roque.
The House of Representatives impeached Bautista over allegations of ill-gotten wealth and election-related offenses in 2017.
Roque, a former party-list representative of the 17th Congress and presidential spokesperson before filing his Certificate of Candidacy, recalled that he was among the three congressmen who vigorously pursued Bautista’s impeachment right from the Justice Committee level.
He recently disclosed that he declined the Comelec chairmanship because the poll body should have a non-partisan head, unlike Bautista.
“This year’s presidential elections won’t be marred by serious cheating allegations with the absence of Bautista, who has gone into hiding in the United States since 2017,” Roque said in a news release on Saturday.
“Flight is the evidence of guilt. Otherwise, he should return to the country and explain before Congress whether there was cheating in the 2016 elections, especially in the vice-presidential race,” he added.
Roque said “people like him (Bautista) should never be appointed in any government position to “value the integrity of institutions and survival of our democracy.”
Roque urged Bautista to come home and answer questions surrounding the source code, data privacy leak, and election-related bribery, among other allegations.
He added that only the Comelec chair and electronic voting system firm Smartmatic could keep the source code of the automated election system, which can be manipulated to affect the final election results.
Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., the UniTeam standard-bearer, narrowly lost the vice-presidential race to Leni Robredo in 2016.
In the same year, Marcos filed an electoral protest against Robredo, citing several election irregularities and anomalies.
The Supreme Court sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal unanimously dismissed last year the electoral protest filed by Marcos against Robredo.
No records
Roque likewise told Marcos’ critics to stop barking up the wrong tree in the absence of legal evidence to show that the son of the late president violated human rights during the martial law era.
“Anti-Marcos groups should not demand an apology from Bongbong Marcos because he has not been charged nor found guilty of human rights violation in the Philippine or American courts,” Roque said, a result of his legal due diligence on the former senator who has topped all presidential surveys since October 2021.
Roque strongly supported a law compensating the martial law victims but also appealed to anti-Marcos groups to move on after 35 years.
“It is unfair to cast aspersion on Bongbong Marcos’ character because he refuses to take responsibility for something that he did not commit during his father’s presidency,” he said.
He said parents should not be put to death for their children and vice versa because each will die for their sins.
“I have been a victim of guilt by association, myself, during my candidacy for the International Law Commission,” Roque said. “My critics have wrongly accused President Duterte and myself as enablers of rights violators in the country. Candidates applying for a government or an international post must be judged primarily on their professional accomplishments and not by whom they are related or affiliated to.”
Source: Philippines News Agency
