Former senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Monday asked the Presidential Electoral Tribunal to investigate reports that a revisor from the camp of Vice President Leni Robredo had joined PET personnel on their outing, even though they are a recount of votes for the 2016 vice presidential race.
In an urgent motion, Marcos, through lawyer George Garcia, informed the PET of the trip of the tribunal’s 24 head revisors, alternate head revisor, appraiser, ballot box custodians or handlers and chief tabulator in a resort in Calamba City in Laguna on June 22, which was joined by Robredo’s revisor, Osmundo Abuyuan.
Marcos questioned the propriety of having a representative from Robredo’s camp present during the outing.
“Fraternizing with the party revisor for the protestee is obviously prohibited by this Honorable Tribunal since this act is proscribed not only by the Code of Conduct for Court Personnel but also by the Canon of Judicial Ethics,” the manifestation said.
Marcos said the outing would imply that Robredo’s camp had already “infiltrated and curried favor with these PET personnel in order to manipulate, influence and control the revision proceedings and maneuver the results in her favor.”
“Protestant Marcos cannot help but wonder if the ongoing judicial recount and revision proceedings have been compromised given that the same is presided by the very same PET personnel who appear to be in cahoots with the protestee’s camp,” the pleading said.
The Marcos camp pointed out that head revisors play a crucial role in the ongoing revision of votes because they are the ones who preside over their respective revision committees and control the conduct of the judicial recounting of ballots.
“In fact, these head revisors and the alternate head revisors are in charge of initially determining whether the ballots found inside the ballots are valid, rejected or stray. They are likewise mandated to determine if the protested ballots comply with the 50-percent shading threshold as originally decided by the PET,” Marcos said.
Marcos added that the actions of the PET personnel constitute improper and unethical behavior, which would immeasurably affect not only the integrity of the ongoing recount but also the honor and dignity of the judiciary as an institution.
Because of this, the Marcos camp urged the PET “to impose the appropriate sanctions on these PET personnel, the protestee [Robredo] and her party revisor.”
Marcos told the tribunal that they learned about the outing through the Facebook account of PET head revisor Maria Katrina Rosales when she posted the photos of their “Pansol outing” last June 24.
A few days later, on July 2, Rosales deleted the photos from her Facebook account in an “apparent bid to rectify her mistake of publicly posting the incriminating photos of their ‘Pansol outing.”
However, the camp of Marcos was able to take screen grabs of the photos and submitted them to the PET, including the names of the tribunal’s personnel in attendance.
A lawyer for the Robredo camp, Romulo Macalintal, said they saw nothing wrong with Abuyuan’s presence at the outing because revisors from both camps had been invited.
“In fact, we are wondering why they are even asking for an investigation when they sent food to the said event,” he added.
Earlier, the camp of Robredo questioned the Marcos camp over the use of plastic magnifying lens by one of their revisors. They said this was prohibited under the rules.
Earlier this month, the PET ordered local officials in Camarines Sur to explain alleged anomalies in ballots found from precincts in the province during the ongoing recount of votes in the vice presidential race in 2016.
In a notice of resolution, the PET required several officials of Tinambac town, Tigaon town and Iriga City to submit their respective explanations to various irregularities found by revisors in the ongoing recount of votes for resolution of the protest filed by former Marcos against Robredo.
The tribunal gave the local officials 10 days from receipt of notice to comply with the directive.
The recount covers three pilot provinces—Camarines Sur, Iloilo and Negros Oriental—covering a total of 5,418 clustered precincts.
After recount of these three provinces, the PET will decide whether to proceed with the recount on a total of 132,446 precincts in 39,221 clustered precincts covering 27 provinces and cities identified in the protest of Marcos.
Marcos filed the protest on June 29, 2016, claiming that the camp of Robredo cheated in the automated polls in the May 2016 national polls.
Robredo won the vice presidential race in the May 2016 polls with 14,418,817 votes or 263,473 more than Marcos’ 14,155,344 votes.
Meanwhile, a think tank, Stratbase ADRi, said chainging the threshold of ballots from 25 percent to 50 percent in the ongoing recount would disenfranchise voters.
“The ruling would grossly violate the rights of all voters in the 2016 elections as their votes that had already been duly counted and canvased would be invalidated,” the group said in a statement. With Rio N. Araja