Marcos son loses bid to overturn VP election loss
MANILA: Voting 15-0, the Supreme Court (SC), siting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, on Tuesday unanimously dismissed the protest filed by the son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos against Vice President Leni Robredo for alleged cheating and other irregularities in the May 2016 polls.
Of the total, lawyer Brian Keith Hosaka, the SC spokesman, said seven of the jurists “fully concurred with the decision” while the remaining eight “concurred with the result” arising from the protest filed by then senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, the only son and namesake of the late dictator.
Marcos lost by a total of 263,000 votes to Robredo in the vice presidential race in the May 2016 elections but filed a poll protest due mainly to alleged vote-buying, cheating and similar poll irregularities.
The dismissal marked the end of more than four years of litigation and also came less than two years before the fixed six-year terms of President Rodrigo Duterte and Vice President Robredo are to end in 2022 as mandated by the Constitution.
Meanwhile, Hosaka told reporters he could not give the full details, admitting he has yet to receive a full copy of the decision from the hearing which were highlighted by an exchange of charges and counter-charges from the opposing camps.
But one of the sources acquainted with the case revealed that the tribunal dismissed the Marcos petition mainly for his failure to pinpoint specific acts that would prove his claim of massive electoral fraud.
In addition, the source disclosed the petition was “bare, laden with slurs and repetitions” as to the time, place and manner of irregularities.
The source cited as an example the case of the three provinces cited by Marcos — Camarines Sur in the Bicol Region as well as Negros Occidental and the Iloilo in the Visayas — where the alleged cheating and similar poll frauds occurred.
But as it turned out, Robredo’s lead over Marcos in the three disputed provinces increased by 15,000 when the tribunal ordered a recount of the ballots as petitioned by Marcos, according to the source.