Robredo camp: Marcos case ‘weak, flawed’
LOSING VICE-PRESIDENTIAL candidate Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. on Monday challenged the camp of Vice-President Maria Leonor G. Robredo that they both withdraw all their filed motions before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), which he said are the cause of delay in his electoral protest.
“We will withdraw all our motion so we can proceed with the recount. We will concur. They should withdraw as well all their motion to the incidents they are questioning…so we could proceed with the recount. That’s a challenge. I’m challenging them,” Mr. Marcos said at a press briefing.
Mr. Marcos’s comments was in response to the remarks of Ms. Robredo’s legal counsel, Romulo B. Macalintal, early Monday that the cause of delay is rooted in a “weak and flawed election protest.”
Mr. Macalintal said, “He only has to blame himself for filing a weak and flawed election protest that the (PET) has to resolve many preliminary matters before the case could move on.”
Mr. Marcos also reiterated his claim that the fraud during the 2016 election was solely targeted at him.
Asked by the media if he was accusing the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and Smartmatic of conspiring with Ms. Robredo in the alleged fraud, Mr. Marcos replied: “Yes. The evidence will be the final count and the recount as opposed to the count of Comelec and Smartmatic.”
He also questioned the ballot images they acquired, which supposedly show Ms. Robredo getting votes despite the “over-voting or under-voting” in the ballot.
He added that they also noticed a “square” in Ms. Robredo’s name in the ballot.
“There was suddenly a square. What does that square mean? For the sake of argument, let’s say that the square was the signal to the machine to count. But why would you count an under-vote, over-vote? It’s a spoiled ballot, but why did it count Robredo? Why is it that when there’s a period in my name in the ballot, it didn’t count me? It’s obvious what they did with my votes,” he said.
In the 2016 vice-presidential race, Ms. Robredo won against Mr. Marcos with a lead of 263,473 votes. Mr. Marcos thereafter filed an electoral protest on June 29, 2016 before the Supreme Court sitting as the PET. — Camille A. Aguinaldo
