THE Supreme Court, sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), has dismissed the electoral protest filed by former Senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. against Vice President Leni Robredo in connection with the vice presidential race last 2016.
At a news briefing, SC spokesman Brian Keith Hosaka said the PET’s decision was unanimous but could not provide further details as the official copy of the decision has yet to be released by the Court.
Marcos’s camp statement
Marcos’S lawyer Victor Rodriguez issued a statement following the release of the PET’s decision, saying that“based on the official pronouncement made by the Presidential Electoral Tribunal today [Tuesday], the court unanimously voted to dismiss our second cause of action which is the manual recount and judicial revision.”
“However, as to the issue on how to proceed with our third cause of action which is the annulment of votes in Mindanao, the Tribunal has yet to decide on the matter.”
Hosaka added: “Out of the 15 members of the Tribunal who were present in today’s [Tuesday] meeting, I was informed that seven fully concurred in the dismissal, while eight concurred in the result.” He said the SC will upload in its web site a copy of the resolutions detailing the reasons for the dismissal once these are available.
The PET’s decision came just few months after Associate Justice Marvic Leonen, the justice assigned to the case, junked the petition for inhibition filed by Marcos camp who accused him of being biased and intentionally delaying the resolution of the case so that it would end up moot and academic, considering that the filing for candidacies in the 2022 national elections is already near.
Leonen was also a subject of an impeachment complaint filed before the House of Representatives for the delay in the resolution of cases assigned to him.
Marcos’s camp has denied any involvement in the filing of the impeachment complaint.
The Comelec declared Robredo as the winner in the vice presidential race in the 2016 election after she got 14,418,817 votes, which is 263,473 votes more than the 14,155,344 votes received by Marcos.
Marcos filed an election protest on June 29, 2016, claiming that the camp of Robredo cheated in the automated polls.
In his election protest, Marcos cited three causes of action—first, that Automated Elections System (AES) was compromised, hence, the integrity of the AES cannot be relied upon to declare a legitimate winner; the second requires the revision or manual recount of the actual ballots to determine the votes cast in all the 36,465 protested clustered precincts while the third cause of action sought the annulment of election results for the VP position in the provinces of Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur and Basilan, on the ground of terrorism, intimidation and harassment of voters, as well as pre-shading of ballots in all of the 2,756 protested clustered precincts in these areas.
The PET has dismissed Marcos’s first cause of action for being “meaningless and pointless.”
On the other hand, Hosaka said the PET decided to release the committee report on the revision and recount of ballots on the three pilot provinces—Iloilo, Negros Oriental and Camarines Sur—involving 5,415 precincts.
Associate Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguiao, who was then assigned to handle the election protest, submitted the report to PET last September 9, 2019.
Marcos’s camp sought Leonen’s inhibition from the case also based on his previous pronouncements in a number of landmark cases.
Marcos cited Justice Leonen’s harsh remarks in dissenting opinion in the SC decision allowing his father, the late strongman and former President Ferdinand Marcos’s burial at the Libingan ng Mga Bayani.
He added that prior to his appointment to the SC, Justice Leonen served as head of the government panel during the negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) under the administration of former President Benigno Aquino III.
