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MANILA – The Supreme Court, constituted as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), rejected on Tuesday the motions that sought to inhibit the associate judge of the Supreme Court Marvic Leonen from the electoral protest presented by the vice-presidential candidate defeated in 2016 Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos , Jr.
Supreme Court sources confirmed that the SC magistrates voted “unanimously” to reject the motions presented by Marcos and the Attorney General’s Office (OSG), which accused Leonen of bias against the Marcos.
Leonen is the member in charge of Marcos’ electoral protest against Vice President Leni Robredo.
The PET also required OSG and The Manila Times reporter Jomar Canlas to show why they should not be found in contempt of court.
The GSO is not part of the electoral protest, but justified its participation as a “tribune of the people,” while Marcos and OSG strongly cited the Canlas reports as the basis for imputing partiality on the part of Leonen.
In his motion, Marcos cited Leonen’s “scathing pronouncements” in his dissenting opinion in the Marcos burial cases to back up his claim that Leonen was “biased and partisan” against him and his family.
He repeated this accusation at a press conference after his presentation.
It also included the appointment of Leonen by former President Benigno Aquino III as the government negotiator in the peace talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and Canlas’s two-part report, which discussed the July reflection paper. Leonen’s 2017, reportedly expressing his opinion that the electoral protest should be immediately dismissed.
Marcos also accused Leonen of deliberately delaying the resolution of the case with less than 2 years until the term of the vice-presidential position that Marcos is challenging.
As ABS-CBN News reported, GSO’s motion used similar arguments raised by Marcos in his motion, even citing, at one point, the same paragraph from Leonen’s dissenting opinion in the Marcos burial cases.
FAIR IN: 2016 defeated vice presidential candidate Bongbong Marcos seeks to inhibit Deputy Supreme Court Justice Marvic Leonen from his electoral protest against Vice President Leni Robredo before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal. Request reorganization and resolution of pending incidents.
– Mike Navallo (@mikenavallo) November 9, 2020
Marcos denied having “joined forces” with GSO to seek inhibition from Leonen, as Canlas reported.
OSG further accused Leonen of mishandling a case that, while it ended with the acquittal of Imelda Marcos, allegedly led to the loss of Imelda because she was allegedly forced to re-litigate for 10 more years.
The attorney general had previously supported Marcos’s view that the PET can annul the elections in 3 Mindanao provinces and declare the elections unsuccessful, without calling special elections.
He also sided with Marcos on the shading threshold issue, leaving Comelec to defend his own decision to employ a 25 percent threshold.
This is not the first time that PET has backed one of its own.
In 2018, he rejected Marcos’s attempt to inhibit SC Associate Judge Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa on the basis of his alleged bias towards his former boss, former President Benigno Aquino III, for whom he previously served as secretary of justice.
The Supreme Court had also twice rejected GSO’s move and Marcos Lorenzo Gadon’s supporter attorney to gain access to Leonen’s Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALN) disclosures in an attempt to file a quo warranto petition in his against.
Marcos also denied that he supports movements to seek the removal of Leonen from the SC, but said he had tried to prevent Gadon from pursuing him.
The former senator urges the court to proceed with its third cause of action on the nullity of the elections in the provinces of Maguindanao, Basilan and Lanao del Sur despite an earlier finding by PET that Robredo’s advantage over him from 263,000 increased. at 15,000 after the initial count. .
Robredo said that the PET Rules were clear that not showing a substantial recovery after the initial count should lead to the dismissal of the electoral protest.
Marcos insisted that his third cause of action was separate and distinct, not covered by the same rule invoked by the vice president.
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