MANILA – Refusing to concede, defeated vice presidential candidate Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. asked the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) to reverse its dismissal of his election protest against Vice President Leni Robredo.
In his motion for reconsideration, Marcos said his third cause of action — the annulment of 2016 election results for the vice presidency in Lanao del Sur, Basilan, and Maguindanao — could independently proceed from the manual recount and judicial revision.
Marcos also urged the PET to proceed with the presentation of evidence before a special committee and further asked the tribunal to order the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to conduct a technical examination of the voters’ signatures appearing on the Election Day Computerized Voters’ List as against the signatures appearing on the Voters Registration Records in the protested clustered precincts.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court sitting as PET unanimously voted to uphold Robredo’s vice presidential triumph in the 2016 national polls, citing that Marcos failed to make a substantial recovery of votes and present proof of irregularities.
The PET said Robredo would still maintain a lead of 15,130 votes “even if we proceed with the third cause of action” based on the results of the manual recount in the three pilot provinces of Camarines Sur, Iloilo and Negros Oriental.
“To entertain the third cause of action is to risk frustrating the valid exercise of the nation’s democratic will and subject it to the endless whims of a defeated candidate,” the tribunal said.
Reacting to Marcos’ latest move, Robredo’s legal counsel Romulo Macalintal said it would be a miracle for the former senator if he can let the PET reverse its verdict.
“Marcos would be the luckiest man in the world if he could reverse the unanimous decision by merely repeating the same issues and arguments already decided by the entire PET,” Macalintal said.
In his electoral protest filed a month after the election day in 2016, Marcos urged the PET to nullify the votes from these the Mindanao provinces for “massive fraud”, citing Comelec’s technical examination of the results.
Marcos also questioned the poll results following his claim of “widespread presence of terrorism, violence, threats, coercion, force, intimidation and harassment of voters as well as pre-shading of ballots in all of the 2,756 clustered precincts.”/PN
