MANILA – Losing vice presidential candidate Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos has urged Supreme Court Associate Justice Marvic Leonen to inhibit from his electoral protest against Vice President Leni Robredo.
The former senator on Monday submitted a strong manifestation with “extremely urgent omnibus motion” to the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) calling for Leonen’s inhibition.
Leonen is currently the justice-in-charge of Marcos’ electoral protest, replacing Associate Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa.
“If truth be told, the scathing pronouncements of Associate Justice Leonen in a number of landmark cases, his previous employment history as well as the manner in which he has handled the election protest thus far will prove that he will not be a fair and impartial ponente (author) in the instant electoral protest,” Marcos said.
“It is clear that we’ll never get justice if Leonen is around because of his hatred towards me and my family. This is evidenced by his past decisions where he unequivocally condemned me and my family. It’s obvious he’s doing everything in his power to suppress the real story behind the 2016 Vice-Presidential elections, disenfranchising millions of Filipinos who wanted nothing but credible elections,” he added.
Marcos furthered that Leonen inquiring about PET’s jurisdiction over his protest when hearings have been conducted and pending for years “is clearly a delaying tactic.”
“We have to do something dahil very clear that Justice Leonen has prejudged this case. Justice Leonen is hostile to me, to my family, to our entire group,” Marcos said in an online press conference.
The former senator added that he has no intention of further delaying his protest, and what he wanted was to prevent the protest from becoming moot and academic given that the filing of certificates of candidacy for the 2022 elections will begin next year.
In his electoral protest filed in 2016, Marcos urged the PET to nullify the votes from 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
