ILOILO City – Four ballot boxes retrieved from Passi City, Iloilo for the recount of votes cast for Vice President in the 2016 election did not have metal seals while one had a broken seal.
The Supreme Court sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) is now on last day of retrieving ballot boxes in Iloilo province. Yesterday it received ballot boxes from 86 clustered precincts in Passi City.
The four ballot boxes without seals were from clustered precincts 16, 18, 80, and 82 in Passi City while the one with the broken seal was from clustered precinct 26.
From the Philippine Span Asia Containers, Inc. warehouse in Barangay Balabago, Jaro district where the boxes are temporarily secured, these would be transported to the high court for the recount.
Defeated vice presidential candidate Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. filed an election protest against Vice President Maria Leonor “Leni” Robredo. He alleged irregularities during the 2016 election such as pre-shading of ballots, massive vote buying, script change in the transparency server that supposedly altered the election results, pre-loaded secure digital cards, misreading of ballots, malfunctioning vote counting machines, and an “abnormally high” unaccounted votes/undervotes.
The PET expected 76 ballot boxes from the municipality of Dumangas, Iloilo but only 53 arrived around 9:15 a.m. yesterday; the 23 others turned out to be in the Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET) in connection with the election protest filed by defeated 2016 senatorial election candidate Francis Tolentino against Sen. Leila de Lima.
Of the 53 boxes, three were found to have damaged bases and contained wet ballots. They were from clustered precincts 25, 46 and 50.
From Banate, Iloilo, ballot boxes from 34 clustered precincts were also received by the PET.
As of this writing yesterday, PET was expecting within the day ballot boxes from the municipalities of Anilao, Barotac Nuevo, Dingle, Dueñas, and San Enrique.
Today, ballot boxes from the municipalities of Ajuy, Balasan, Barotac Viejo, Batad, Carles, Concepcion, Lemery, San Dionisio, San Rafael, and Sara are expected to arrive at the Philippine Span Asia Containers, Inc. warehouse.
Iloilo is one of three pilot provinces identified by defeated vice presidential candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jr. for preliminary recount of votes. The two others are Camarines Sur and Negros Oriental.
Results of the manual recount in the three provinces would determine if the PET would proceed with the Marcos’ protest.
Marcos lost the vice presidential race to Robredo by 263,473 votes in the final and official tally of the Commission on Elections. He garnered 14,155,344 votes while Robredo got 14,418,817 votes.
In his election protest, the former senator questioned the election results in 39,221 clustered precincts in 25 provinces and five cities involving around nine million votes./PN
