FORMER Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has asked the Supreme Court to order the Commission on Elections to pay rent or storage fees to preserve the materials used in the 2016 national elections.
“The Comelec is mandated by the Constitution to act as the primary guardian of the sanctity of the ballots and other paraphernalia…in the conduct of the election,” Marcos said through his lawyer George Erwin Garcia.
He made the plea following a letter sent by Maria Lea Alarkon, director III of the Comelec’s Office for Overseas Voting seeking payment from Marcos for the expenses her office had incurred for safekeeping the ballots overseas.
Marcos also said he received the tribunal’s resolution requiring him to pay the same, but he said an election protest was a mere incident in the conduct of the elections.
He said it was the Comelec’s function to safeguard the integrity of the ballots and other election materials.
“This is precisely why the Precautionary Protection Order issued by the Honorable Tribunal in this case was directed to the Comelec and its concerned officials and employees,” Marcos said.
“Consequently, all the costs and expenses necessary and incidental to the safekeeping of the ballot boxes and its contents and other election
paraphernalia should be assumed by the Comelec.”
In his protest, Marcos assailed the election results in 39,221 clustered precincts”•36,465 of which he paid for the conduct of manual counting and judicial revision. The asked that the results of the remaining 2,756 be annulled.
Based on the Comelec data, the 39,221 clustered precincts are composed of 132,446 precincts.
The high court recently ordered the preservation of the “automated election equipment and records such as Vote Counting Machines, Consolidation and Canvass System units, Secure Digital cards (main and back-up), and the other data storage devices in all of the 92,509 clustered precincts used in the May 2016 elections effective immediately, and continuing until further orders from the Tribunal.”
Marcos, who lost to now Vice President Leni Robredo by only 263,473 votes, accuses her of “massive electoral fraud, anomalies and irregularities” such as pre-shading of ballots, pre-loaded Secure Digital cards, misreading of ballots, malfunctioning VCMs, and an “abnormally high” unaccounted votes/undervotes for the position of VP.
Earlier, the PET prescribed the rules and guidelines governing the forthcoming revision of ballots in connection with the Marcos election protest against Robredo.