Tolentino camp reveals discovery of 2013 ballots in ongoing recount

Ballots used during the 2013 elections have been found in 10 ballot boxes that are being subjected to an ongoing Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET) vote recount of the 2016 senatorial race.

Lawyer Sara Mawis, counsel for 2016 senatorial candidate Francis Tolentino, said the

discovery of the mysterious ballots bolstered their claims of the existence of “irregularities” in the ballot count of the 2016 poll results that Tolentino had questioned.

“We are at loss on how to approach this controversy but it really showed irregularities as per revision, as shown by the said 2013 ballots,” said Mawis, one of the lawyers of Tolentino.

Mawis said most of the ballot boxes from Pagbilao, Quezon, when opened, exposed ballots used during the 2013 elections. These mysterious ballots were contained in the boxes used during the 2016 senatorial elections.

The Tolentino camp disclosed the alleged discovery of the Pagbilao ballot boxes notwithstanding the warning of contempt aired by detained Senator Leila de Lima, whose victory in the 2016 Senate race has been placed in serious threat by the protest filed by the former Metropolitan Manila Development Authority chairman.

De Lima had earlier called on the SET to cite Tolentino in contempt for allegedly violating the sub judice rule by feeding media information about the unfolding ballot recount being undertaken by the tribunal.

The senator claimed that Tolentino made sub judice statements on October 18 after the SET launched the manual recount of more than 600 ballot boxes that the former MMDA chief believes to contain questionable ballots that will reverse the outcome of the senatorial race.

Tolentino placed 13th in the 2016 senatorial race while De Lima placed 12 among the winning finishers.

The Tolentino camp recalled that at the initial count taken last month, ballot boxes from Calbayog, Samar, also contained 2013 ballots.

Tolentino was the MMDA appointee of then President Benigno Aquino III while De Lima served as Aquino’s Justice secretary for nearly a full six-year term.

Tolentino, who ran as an independent after a spat with Liberal Party leaders, had identified 751 ballot boxes which he claimed to have been the sources of various anomalies that changed the true results of the Senate race.

Only 681 of the ballot boxes have so far been retrieved by SET in the vote-rich provinces of Cebu, Bulacan, Iloilo, and Nueva Ecija.

The SET is headed by Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio as chairman. Its members are SC Associate Justices Teresita Leonardo-de Castro and Lucas Bersamin, and Senators Joel Villanueva, Grace Poe, Nancy Binay, Richard Gordon, Franklin Drilon, and Antonio Trillanes IV.