The Supreme Court, sitting as Presidential Electoral Tribunal, has reset its preliminary conference on the election protest of former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. against Vice President Leni Robredo.
SC spokesman Theodore Te disclosed that the PET has resolved to move the preliminary conference originally scheduled on June 21 to July 11.
The court action came despite an earlier appeal of Marcos for immediate proceedings and resolution of his election protest against Robredo’s election as vice president in 2016 polls.
The SC official said both camps are also ordered to file their briefs at least five days before the said date and serve the same on the adverse party.
“This is without prejudice to the tribunal’s resolution of all remaining pending incidents,” the SC said in a media briefing.
Earlier, Marcos has filed successive motions seeking immediate resolution of his election protest.
Marcos also asked the tribunal to designate hearing commissioners ahead of the hearing to expedite the proceedings, hasten the decryption of ballot images from the clustered precincts of the 30 contested provinces subject of his poll protest and print the ballot image from the Secure Digital (SD) cards and/or data storage devices from each of the 36,465 protested clustered precincts in the contested areas ahead of the preliminary conference.
The PET set the preliminary conference after requiring both Marcos and Robredo to pay cash deposits of P66.02 million and P15.44 million for their respective protest and counter-protest.
Marcos filed the protest on June 29 last year, claiming that the camp of Robredo cheated in the automated polls in May also year. He sought annulment of about a million votes cast in three provinces—Lanao del Sur, Basilan and Maguindanao.
In his protest, Marcos contested the results in a total of 132,446 precincts in 39,221 clustered precincts covering 27 provinces and cities.
Robredo filed her answer in August last year and also filed counter-protest and questioned the results in over 30,000 polling precincts in several provinces where Marcos won. She also sought the dismissal of the protest for lack of merit and jurisdiction of PET.
However, the tribunal, in a ruling earlier this year, junked Robredo’s plea and proceeded with the case after finding of sufficiency in form and substance in the protest.
Robredo won the vice presidential race with 14,418,817 votes or 263,473 more than Marcos who got 14,155,344 votes.