FORMER Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has asked the Supreme Court (SC), sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), to re-examine the initial vote recount results in the electoral protest he filed against Vice President Leni Robredo.
In a 809-page memorandum filed before the tribunal on December 19, 2019 and released to reporters on Tuesday, January 7, Marcos asked the PET “to reconsider, review and re-examine the preliminary appreciation in the pilot provinces of Camarines Sur, Iloilo and Negros Oriental.”
In October, the PET announced Robredo widened her lead over Marcos in the recount of votes in the three pilot provinces, showing Robredo with 1,510,178 votes now compared to her 1,493,517 votes in the chosen areas previously.
With the additional 15,093 votes from the recount, Robredo maintained her lead over Marcos with 278,566 votes.
The defeated vice presidential bet asked the PET to “proceed with the Third Cause of Action notwithstanding the pendency of the resolution on the Second Cause of Action,” as well as to order handwriting experts from the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to conduct a technical examination of the voters’ signatures appearing on the Election Day Computerized Voter’s List (EDCVL), according to a report by the Philippine Star.
In addition, he asked the tribunal to “conduct another preliminary conference for the Third Cause of Action and thereafter to proceed with the presentation of evidence.”
Marcos, in his second cause of action, is asking the PET to recount the votes in 36,465 clustered precincts covering 27 provinces in the country, while in his third cause of action he is seeking to nullify the votes of three Mindanao provinces.
The third cause of action is separate and distinct from the Second Cause of Action, which means the dismissal of one cause of action “shall not affect the others,” according to Marcos.
“On the contrary, since the Third Cause of Action for the annulment of the election results is a separate, distinct and independent cause of action, the same can and must proceed independently of the result from the recount, revision and re-appreciation of ballots,” his camp said.
Meanwhile, Robredo filed her own memorandum asking the PET to dismiss the election protest filed by Marcos after failing to present any substantial recovery in the three pilot provinces.
“With the failure of protestant Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. to show any substantial recovery in his pilot provinces, the election protest should be immediately dismissed,” Robredo’s lawyer Romulo Macalintal said.
