Legal battle for VP seat continues

LOSING vice-presidential candidate Ferdinand “Bongbong” R. Marcos, Jr. on Monday accused the camp of VicePresident Maria Leonor “Leni” G. Robredo of “delaying tactics.” “It has become obvious that delay has become the name of [Ms.] Robredo’s game,” Mr. Marcos’s counsel, Victor Rodriguez, told reporters after filing Mr. Marcos’s reply to Ms. Robredo’s opposition to hold a preliminary conference on the case. “Protestee Robredo’s opposition to the setting of the Preliminary Conference is obviously dilatory in nature. This Honorable Tribunal should not be swayed by her ambiguous and distorted arguments,” reads the 11-page Reply to Opposition filed before the Supreme Court, which sits as Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET). Meanwhile, Ms. Robredo’s camp, in a statement released yesterday, said they have filed a motion for reconsideration on the PET ruling that granted the protest case to continue. Romulo Macalintal, counsel of Ms. Robredo, said: “[T]he PET ruled that Marcos’s protest questioning the results in various provinces consisting of 662 municipalities and their component cities and the 2,537 clustered from five (5) highly urbanized cities, contained narration of ultimate facts on the alleged irregularities and anomalies in said areas and clustered precincts.” However, he pointed out that Mr. Marcos “did not specifically point to poll irregularities in said 662 municipalities and component cities.” After an early lead in the election count in the 2016 national elections, Mr. Marcos eventually lost in the vice-presidential race by a slim margin of about 200,000 votes to Ms. Robredo. —