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Tuesday, March 19, 2024

PET minority gave Leni fake victory–FMJR

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The camp of former Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Saturday said the figures showing Vice President Maria Leonor Robredo was leading by 15,000 votes against him came from Supreme Court Associate Justice Alfredo Caguioa.

READ: Robredo lead over Marcos widens by 15k

“The figures cited by Justices Caguioa and [Antonio] Carpio in their dissenting opinions came from the revision report penned by Justice Caguioa,” said Marcos’ legal counsel Vic Rodriguez in a statement.

“That is precisely why the majority of the Tribunal by a very decisive 11-2 vote emphatically junked that Caguioa minority opinion favoring Mrs. Leni Robredo finding the figures presented before them to be outrageous and ordered the election protest to proceed with the parties to file their Comment and Memoranda,” he said.

Robredo visited Camarines Norte Saturday to meet with different sectoral groups in her home region. She hails from Naga, a component city in the nearby province of Camarines Sur.

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She first visited a fisherfolk group in Mercedes, Camarines Norte, and handed out financial assistance from the Office of the Vice President.

Rodriguez, in his statement, also said “it only confirmed our suspicion that Mrs. Robredo’s premature celebration and claim of another fake victory in the Tribunal was a product of advance information she’s been receiving all along through a highly placed deep throat.”

Reports on Friday showed that Robredo has extended her lead over Marcos votes after the manual recount in the three pilot provinces the former senator picked in his protest before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal.

The Supreme Court, sitting as the PET, stated that Robredo’s overall, nationwide lead—after votes in Negros Oriental, Iloilo, and Camarines Sur were re-counted—increased from 263,473 to 278,566.

Marcos had picked the three provinces as part of his effort to prove that cheating happened in the 2016 polls.

Robredo got 1,510,178 votes from the pilot provinces as opposed to Marcos’ 204,512, after deducting votes from sustained objections and adding ones earned due to admitted claims, the PET found out.

These figures are higher than the votes Robredo and Marcos got as reflected in the provincial certificates of canvass—1,493,517 for Robredo and 202,136 for Marcos, the tribunal added.

The PET voted to order the release of the initial report earlier this week. 

It also required the parties to comment on the report and to submit their respective memoranda on the “various issues relating to the jurisdiction and other matters relating to the third cause of action” within 20 days from receiving the notice.

Associate Justices Carpio and Caguioa dissented, arguing the case should have been dismissed.

Marcos’ supposed third cause of action is the annulment of 2016 election results for vice president in Lanao del Sur, Basilan, and Maguindanao due to alleged terrorism, violence, force, threats, intimidation, pre-shading of ballots, and vote substitution.

He chose the three pilot provinces under Rule 65 of the 2010 PET Rules, which allows a protestant or counter-protestant to indicate provinces that “best exemplify the frauds or irregularities” alleged in the petition and subject them to an examination of ballots.

Marcos, namesake, and son of former President Ferdinand E. Marcos, is still confident the election protest he filed before the High Tribunal gained strength, saying the latest decision made by PET was a good result because the case was not dismissed.

Marcos said: “It is the first time any presidential protest arrived to this stage in the protest.  Maybe after all these, kailangan balikan natin ang sistema natin ng pagprotesta. The whole electoral system… It is not advantageous to our electoral system, our voters, our political system, the entire state that we wait for this long on an important decision.  

“But nonetheless, that was what happened the last three years.  What happened today is, the case goes on and we will go from strength to strength.”

Robredo, who ran under the ruling Liberal Party, the political party of then President Benigno Aquino III, was declared winner in the vice presidential race in 2016 with 14,418,817 votes, up by only 263,473 against the votes received by Marcos.

But Marcos declared the cheating carried out in the elections was massive and unprecedented because it had become institutionalized.

The young Marcos said he would present the “true results” of the elections so that he could assume the position. 

READ: Leni’s vote gain came from fraud, Bongbong insists

READ: Robredo bullying PET, Marcos claims

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