Grace Padaca - 2001 Congressional Elections

2001 Congressional Elections

Grace Padaca ran for Congress in 2001. Her campaign struck a responsive chord among Isabela voters, and initial results showed her winning in most of the seven municipalities and one city of the congressional district. The final tally, though, had her losing to her opponent, Faustino "Bojie" Dy, by a margin of 1,285 votes (he got 50.7 percent of the vote to her 49.3 percent).

She protested the results of 151 ballot boxes. Dy countered, questioning the results not only of the 151 precincts but all 812 precincts. Padaca initiated what she called an "Adopt A Ballot Box" campaign, where a donor knew that each P1,000 donated would defray the cost of a ballot box revision. Her campaign was not limited to Isabelinos. She sent letters to people she had never met, but whom she believed to be persons of good will, asking for their help. The great majority responded—people like Enrique Zobel (who also hired her as an accountant in his hacienda in Calatagan, Batangas)--and she raised the required amount.

The revision of the ballots in 812 ballot boxes found definitively that not only were the questioned Angandanan CoC and SoV fraudulent, falsified, and padded, there was also evidence of post-election fraud in the form of genuine ballots being removed from the boxes, then replaced with spurious ones that had Dy's name in handwriting other than the voter's.

But after two and a half years, the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal (HRET), in a decision promulgated on December 18, 2003, declared Dy the winner by 48 votes. Those who signed that decision were Supreme Court Associate Justices Leonardo A. Qusimbing, Angelina Sandoval Gutierrez, Representatives Douglas Cagas (Davao del Sur), Zenaida Ducut (Pampanga), Enrico Echiverri (Caloocan), and Joaquin Chipeco (Laguna). hi

A major point of disagreement was what to do with the ballots with "Grace" written on them. The majority of the HRET refused to count ballots with "Grace" written on them in favor of Grace Padaca. Their reason was that her real name was "Maria Gracia Cielo Padaca" and the nickname she gave when she filed her candidacy was "Bombo Grace". According to their logic, "Grace" was not the same as "Bombo Grace", and there was no reason to conclude that Grace derives from Gracia. Furthermore, it is not the dominant name in Maria Gracia Cielo, since "Maria" appears first.

Justice Vitug made no bones about what he thought of that reasoning, "The admission of 'Grace' only votes will not in any way violate the law," he opined. "No doubt the voters intended to vote for Protestant when they wrote 'Grace' only on the ballot, considering that the same is admittedly the name by which Protestant is popularly known. Additionally, there was no other candidate, whether national or local, who ran in the May 14, 2001 elections with the name or nickname of 'Grace.'"

Vitug also pointed out that the name "Maria GRACE Cielo Padaca" was listed in the certified list of candidates, in all the different copies of CoCs and SoVs and even in the ERs found inside the ballot boxes. He therefore concluded, there could be no doubt that the voters intended to vote for Padaca when they wrote "Grace" on their ballots.