Chief Justice Renato C. Corona on Monday declared as “sufficient in form and substance” the election protest filed by losing vice presidential candidate Manuel “Mar” Roxas II against Vice President Jejomar Binay before the Supreme Court (SC), sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET).

Consequently, Corona ordered SC Clerk of Court and PET Secretary Ma. Luisa Villarama to send summons to Binay requiring him to submit his answer in 10 days.

Court Administrator and SC Spokesman Jose Midas Marquez said Corona issued the order in his capacity as ex-officio chairman of PET, which resolves disputes involving the presidential and vice presidential contests.

“The Chief Justice found the protest of Sen. Roxas sufficient in form and substance and ordered the Secretary of the Tribunal to send summons to the respondent (Binay) requiring him to submit his answer within 10 days from receipt of the notice,” Marquez told a press conference.

Marquez said Roxas’ election protest was raffled off among SC Justices last Friday. He, however, refused to disclose to whom the case was assigned.

The court official said the PET will convene as soon as it receives Binay’s answer.

Binay won over Roxas by more than 700,000 votes in the country’s first automated elections in May.

Last Friday, Roxas filed his election protest and paid a filing fee of R100,000 and an initial deposit of R200,000.

In his 102-page protest, Roxas urged the PET to conduct a manual revision of votes and order a complete and accurate count of an  estimated three million votes that were not canvassed and considered stray or null votes by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and Congress, sitting as the National Board of Canvassers (NBoC)

He also asked the tribunal to conduct a comprehensive, system-wide forensic analysis of the equipment and paraphernalia used during the first ever computerized election in the country.

Roxas also raised in his protest arguments which had been rejected by the NBoC, leading to the proclamation of Binay as the duly elected vice president of the country last June 9.

PET is chaired by Chief Justice Corona and the Associate Justices of the High Court are the members.

Since its creation in 1957, PET has never reversed a proclamation and unseated an incumbent.

Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago’s protest against former President Fidel V. Ramos over the 1992 elections was considered abandoned by PET after she ran and won a Senate seat in 1995.

The PET followed the same vein to Sen. Loren Legarda, whose protest against former Vice President Noli De Castro was lost when she ran for the Senate in 2007.

Actor Fernando Poe Jr. died in 2004 before the PET could even rule on his protest against former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

The camp of Vice President Binay described the credence given by the High Tribunal on the election protest of Roxas as procedural but was quick to point out that there is nothing new in the “allegations.”

“The resolution giving due course to the protest of Mr. Roxas is a matter of procedure. It does not give credence to the allegations made in the protest,” Atty JV Bautista, spokesman for the vice president, said in a statement.

As of press time, Bautista said Binay “has not received a copy of the protest,” which was filed by the legal counsels of the former senator Friday.

Bautista virtually downplayed the protest, saying that it “involves the same allegations during the canvassing that are bereft of merit.”