The Supreme Court, sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, has rejected the plea of former senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to investigate the outing last month of some of its staff in the company of a revisor of Vice President Leni Robredo.
In a resolution, the PET denied Marcos the request to investigate the outing in a resort in Calamba City on June 22, 2018, with Robredo’s revisor since it had already investigated it.
“We deny the motion to investigate as the Tribunal has already commenced and concluded its investigation relative to the subject Pansol outing,” the resolution says.
Marcos is contesting the results of the 2016 vice presidential elections that Robredo won, claiming her camp had cheated.
Meanwhile, the PET has ordered the Commission on Elections to comment on Robredo’s plea to lower the threshold percentage of the valid votes in the ongoing election recount of the votes in the 2016 vice presidential race.
Marcos’ backers said they were “completely surprised and quite shocked with the pronouncement of the Presidential Electoral Tribunal that an investigation on the highly improper Pansol outing had already been conducted and concluded.”
Marcos as the protestant had all the right to know and be duly notified by the PET as to when the investigation commenced, who conducted it, what were the findings and the penalty meted out, Marcos’ spokesman Vic Rodriguez said.
“The fact that we filed the Manifestation clearly indicates all of these”•the illegal Pansol outing, the purported surreptitious investigation, the highly secretive penalty imposed”•happened without our knowledge,” Rodriguez said.
“It is clear in the Counter-Manifestation filed by Mrs. Robredo that she personally knew that an investigation was already carried out and sanctions imposed.
“This clearly demonstrates that she has unbridled access to all sensitive and confidential information ordinarily available only to an insider.”
Earlier, Marcos asked the PET to investigate an out-of-town party of its personnel and a revisor of Robredo that might “compromise” the results of the ongoing manual recount and revision of ballots in the contested 2016 vice presidential election.