MANILA – The Supreme Court (SC) sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) halted the retrieval of around 400 ballot boxes from Iloilo City in relation to the poll protest of losing vice presidential candidate Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.
Lawyer Emil Marañon, a consultant for Vice President Maria Leonor “Leni” Robredo’s legal team, said yesterday SC representatives in Iloilo City received a “verbal order” to halt the retrieval on Tuesday morning as Iloilo City was not covered by Marcos’ electoral protest.
Robredo’s camp argued that Iloilo City was “separate and independent” from Iloilo province and should not be included in the three pilot provinces Marcos picked for a preliminary recount.
“On Tuesday, may dumating na two trucks from the city of Iloilo. Sinabihan na sila ng Supreme Court personnel na may order galing Manila na huwag na i-retrieve iyong ballot boxes,” Marañon said.
He added: “We raised the fact na Iloilo City is a highly-urbanized city and therefore hindi siya part ng province ng Iloilo. Kinonsider naman ng Supreme Court. That’s around 430 ballot boxes.”
Marcos lost the vice presidential race to Robredo by 263,473 votes in the final and official tally of the Commission on Elections (Comelec).
Marcos 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.
Marcos cited alleged pre-shading of ballots, massive vote buying, script change in the transparency server that supposedly altered the results, pre-loaded secure digital cards, misreading of ballots, malfunctioning vote counting machines, and an “abnormally high” unaccounted votes/undervotes for the position of vice president.
There were 1,400 ballot boxes in 5,418 clustered precincts in the three pilot provinces identified by Marcos namely Camarines Sur, Iloilo and Negros Oriental.
Results of the manual recount and revision of ballots in the three provinces would determine if the PET would proceed with the Marcos’ protest./PN
