FORMER senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. has prodded the Supreme Court, sitting as Presidential Electoral Tribunal, to sustain its ruling last January allowing his election protest against Vice President Leni Robredo to proceed.
In a 25-page comment, Marcos asked the SC to junk Robredo’s plea and instead uphold its finding of sufficiency in form and substance of his protest.
Marcos, through his lawyer George Garcia, branded the appeal of Robredo as another dilatory tactic that should be set aside for speedy disposition of the case.
“More than nine months have already gone by and all protestee Robredo has done is to file one dilatory motion after another. If protestee Robredo has nothing to hide, then she should do everything in her power to encourage —rather than hinder—this election protest to move forward,” the pleading stated.
“The millions of voters who trooped to the polls nine months ago deserve no less. They want the truth to come out. The sooner the better,” it said.
Marcos also asked the PET to order the immediate collection, retrieval, transport and delivery of all ballot boxes in all 36,465 clustered precincts during the May 9, 2016 elections.
Marcos also appealed to the presidential electoral tribunal to now proceed with the preliminary conference in the case as provided in Rule 29 of its rules for the conduct of manual recount, judicial revision, technical examination and forensic investigation under Rule 37 as he sought in the protest.
In the same motion, Marcos cited recent developments involving Robredo, particularly her controversial video message against President Rodrigo Duterte and his administration sent to the United Nations commission on narcotics drugs.
The video is being eyed by administration allies as basis for impeachment of Robredo.
“There is clearly a well-funded concerted effort to undermine the Duterte administration, just recently, Robredo’s video message on the alleged extrajudicial killings caused quite a stir among our patriotic countrymen,” he said.
“Robredo cannot have it both ways. She cannot keep claiming that she won the elections fair and square and yet, behind everyone’s back, she keeps finding ways to stop the truth from coming out,” Marcos alleged.
In its earlier ruling, the PET junked Robredo’s plea to have the case dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.
The tribunal rejected Robredo’s argument that the matter should have been raised before Congress when it was still acting as the National Board of Canvassers.
It pointed out that under Article VII, Section 4 of the Constitution pertaining to PET rules, “the tribunal shall be the sole judge of all contests relating to the election, returns and qualifications of the President or Vice President of the Philippines.”
The PET has ruled that the sufficiency in form and substance of Marcos’ election protest is beyond question.
In her appeal, Robredo questioned the tribunal’s finding that Marcos’ protest contained narrations of “ultimate facts” regarding the alleged irregularities.
The Vice President said that Marcos did not specifically point to poll irregularities in various provinces– consisting of 662 municipalities and their component cities and the 2,537 clustered from five highly urbanized cities.
She added the affidavits submitted by Marcos pertained only to 57 towns and component cities.