Leni hails SC ruling upholding integrity of 2016 elections

Vice President Leni Robredo hailed yesterday the decision of the Supreme Court, sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), to uphold the integrity of the 2016 elections.

As this developed, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) said it is looking forward to the immediate resolution of the election protest filed by former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos against Robredo.

The tribunal junked Marcos’ first cause of action calling to nullify the results of the vice presidential race due to a “flawed” automated election system.

“Of course we’re very elated. The dismissal of the first cause of action only confirms that we had a clean election in May 2016 and invalidates his (Marcos’) claim that there was massive cheating,” Robredo said in an interview in Pasay City.

“…the questions with regard to the validity of the (2016) elections were finally put to rest,” she said.

Marcos’ second cause of action is for the revision and recount of all voters’ receipts, election returns and other documents in 27 provinces and highly urbanized cities used in the May 2016 elections.

The third cause of action seeks to annul the election results in Basilan, Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao on the grounds of cheating like vote buying, pre-shading and intimidation, among others.

Robredo won against Marcos, son and namesake of the late dictator, by a slim margin of more than 265,000 votes.

Meanwhile, Robredo urged the Marcos family to admit their sins first before discussions on granting them immunity from cases filed against them begin.

“For me, before we talk about immunity there should be an admission of sins first. It’s hard to forgive a person who is not admitting his sins,” she said.

“I think there’ll be no healing yet, there should be no granting of immunity until they admit that they have sinned. Because that would only mean that they want to free themselves of legal repercussions,” Robredo, a lawyer, said.

President Duterte earlier said if he were the Marcoses, he would return ill-gotten wealth to the government in exchange for immunity.

He, however, clarified the Marcoses did not ask for it, saying only Congress could grant them immunity.

The Marcos family is accused of amassing billions of dollars worth of ill-gotten wealth during the strongman’s 20-year rule.