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MANILA – The Supreme Court, constituted as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, has asked the Electoral Commission and the Attorney General’s Office to comment on pending issues in the electoral protest presented by the defeated candidate Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. against Vice President Leni Robredo, he said. Wednesday the court’s public information office.
The PET ordered Comelec to report whether petitions were filed due to the failure of the elections in the provinces of Lanao del Sur, Basilan and Maguindanao, the 3 provinces where Marcos had sought to annul the elections for alleged terrorism, intimidation, harassment of voters and pre – shading the ballots.
The PET wants to know if special elections were held in these areas and the results of these elections, and seeks Comelec’s comment on certain issues related to Marcos’ third cause of action on the nullity of the elections.
The electoral body and the GSO had 20 days to comment on whether the PET is empowered by the Constitution to declare the nullity of the elections even without special elections, declare the failure of the elections and order the holding of special elections.
Furthermore, the PET is asking the two agencies if the PET’s declaration of election failure could violate Comelec’s constitutional mandate to hold elections.
Meanwhile, the PET required Marcos and Robredo to comment on the Comelec and OSG submissions within 15 days of their receipt.
The move comes just over 10 months since the PET published the results of the initial recount involving 3 pilot provinces in which Robredo’s small lead of around 263,000 votes over Marcos increased by 15,000 votes.
The initial count covered some 5,417 precincts grouped in the provinces of Camarines Sur, Negros Oriental and Iloilo, chosen by Marcos as his pilot provinces where an initial determination of the reasons for the electoral protest was to be made.
Then-Chief Associate Justice Antonio Carpio and Associate Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa, who was the previous member in charge of the electoral protest, said the result should have been sufficient to justify the dismissal of the electoral protest following the PET’s own rules.
Rule 65 allows a protest to be dismissed “without further consideration of the other provinces” if the Protestant probably fails to understand his case after the initial count involving 3 provinces.
But the magistrates voted 11-2 to require both parties to comment on the results of the initial count and on whether the PET could still investigate Marcos’s third cause of action seeking to annul the elections in Maguindanao, Basilan and Lanao del Sur given the results of the initial count and how to perform this process.
THIRD CAUSE OF ACTION
Marcos, in his memorandum, urged the PET to re-examine the preliminary results of the count and urged it to proceed to the third cause of action, which he said is “separate, distinct and independent” from its second cause of action – judicial review, counting and reevaluation of the ballots, rejecting the application of Rule 65.
In August 2017, the PET ruled out Marcos’ first cause of action, questioning the authenticity of the results of the 2016 national elections, calling it “a useless exercise” that would have no “practical effect.”
Marcos had wanted to annul the results of the elections in the 3 provinces of Mindanao for reasons of terrorism, intimidation and previous shadowing of the ballots.
He claimed that he could still overcome Robredo’s advantage of 263,473 votes because he could supposedly lose 497,985 votes if the results of the elections in the 3 Mindanao provinces were annulled.
For this, Marcos proposed that a technical examination of the ballots be carried out in the 3 provinces of Mindanao.
A technical test involves comparing the signatures and fingerprints of voters on the Voter Registration Register (VRR) with the Election Day Computerized Voter List (EDCVL).
But Robredo, in his own memorandum, insisted that Marcos himself agreed during the preliminary conference of the electoral protest that if he cannot show a substantial recovery of the count in the 3 pilot provinces, his protest will be dismissed following Rule 65.
Robredo’s side has called this a “desperate attempt” to salvage a “moribund” electoral protest and, in fact, will create new pilot provinces.
UNANIMOUS
According to sources, the PET vote was unanimous in favor of the recommendation of SC Associate Judge Marvic Leonen, the member in charge of the electoral protest.
Leonen replaced Caguioa after Caguioa lost in the vote in October last year.
Leonen recently faced the threat of a quo warranto petition from admitted Marcos supporter attorney Lorenzo Gadon and Attorney General José Calida.
The Supreme Court earlier this month rejected Gadon and GSO’s attempt to secure statements of assets, liabilities and net worth from Leonen, which they admitted will be used in a quo warranto petition against Leonen.
In a letter dated September 14 to Gadon, Calida himself said that GSO “takes serious note” of Gadon’s accusations about Leonen’s alleged non-presentation of the SALNs and, if true, will not hesitate to question Leonen’s qualifications before the Supreme Court via a quo warranto petition. .
Gadon had previously filed an impeachment lawsuit against the ousted Supreme Court Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno for failing to file SALNs, which eventually became the basis for Cálida’s quo warranto petition against Sereno.
Sereno was ousted in a controversial 8-6 vote in May 2018.
SC, Supreme Court, PET, Presidential Electoral Tribunal, Comelec, Elections Commission, Office of the Attorney General of the Republic, OSG, Leni Robredo, Bongbong Marcos, VP, electoral protest, Marcos electoral protest
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