The Supreme Court (SC), sitting as Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), decided yesterday to postpone for Tuesday next week its initial deliberation on the election protest of former Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. against Vice President Ma. Leonor “Leni” Robredo.
It was learned that the justice to whom the case was assigned by raffle requested that he be given more time to study the election protest.
Yesterday’s session, both in the SC and in the PET, was presided by Acting Chief Justice Antonio T. Carpio in the absence of Chief Justice Maria Lourdes P. A. Sereno who is on a two-week wellness leave.
Robredo, who got 14,418,817 votes, had been declared winner with a margin of 263,473 votes over the 14,155,344 votes garnered by Marcos in the final and official tally.
In his protest, Marcos wanted the PET to nullify Robredo’s proclamation and eventual assumption as the second highest official of the country, and to declare him the duly-elected vice president.
He challenged the election results in 39,221 clustered precincts in 25 provinces and five cities in the country.
He included in his 1,000-page petition 20,000 pages of affidavits, certificates of canvass (COCs) and other supporting documents to support his claim of fraud in the last May 9 national and local elections.
“The votes presumptively obtained by protestee Robredo during the last elections are products of electoral frauds, anomalies and irregularities. Meanwhile, the votes obtained by protestant Marcos were significantly reduced, manipulated and altered to make it appear that he only placed second during the last elections,” the petition stated.
Marcos’ lawyer George Garcia explained that “through a series of electoral frauds, anomalies and irregularities, people behind the whole operation made sure that Robredo would win and that Marcos’ votes would be reduced.”
(Rey Panaligan)