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THE Presidential Electoral
Tribunal will not dismiss outright the election protest of defeated
vice-presidential candidate Loren Legarda despite her running as a
candidate for the Senate in the May election.
Chief Justice
Reynato Puno said the tribunal would wait for Vice-President Noli de
Castro to file his motion before issuing a ruling.
Puno did not
say if Legarda would suffer the same fate of Sen. Miriam Santiago,
who waived the election protest she filed at the PET against
President Fidel Ramos when she sought reelection as senator in 1992.
Puno said the
tribunal would expedite all pending election cases before the term
of elected officials ends on June 30.
He said the
tribunal needs to resolve the cases because it would be useless to
render a ruling after the officials’ three-year term has expired.
“We will
finish all of the election cases in order not to render them moot
and academic,” he said.
Under the
Rules of Court, all election cases decided by the Commission on
Elections could only reach the Supreme Court through a petition for
certiorari to decide if any grave abuse of discretion had been
committed.
 --Jomar
Canlas
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