THE camp of former senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Sunday denounced what it called the “blatant attempts” by the camp of Vice President Leni Robredo to suppress the truth from coming out regarding the alleged fraud and irregularities discovered by the Supreme Court, sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, in connection with the manual recount of the votes in the 2016 vice presidential election.
Marcos claims he was cheated in the 2016 election and has demanded a recount of the votes.
Robredo won the vice presidential race in the with 14,418,817 votes or 263,473 more than Marcos’ 14,155,344 votes.
Vic Rodriguez, Marcos’ spokesman, said they would not allow the bid of Robredo’s camp to derail the ongoing revision of the votes being undertaken by the PET to determine who actually won the vice presidential race two years ago.
“The blatant attempts of Mrs. Robredo to suppress the truth regarding the manual recount of votes have become more desperate,” Rodriguez said in a statement.
“Now that the proof of fraud and massive cheating is out in the open, we expect more desperate disruptions to come our way.”
Rodriguez said Robredo herself had admitted in a recent television interview that even though she was out of the loop with the current administration, “her way of remaining relevant is to try to disrupt the manner in which her office has positioned itself.”
Rodriguez cited Robredo’s recent complaint that Nestor Borromeo, one of Marcos’ revisers, was out of line because he was using a small magnifying glass to count the ballots.
“What she conveniently left out was the fact that the magnifying glass”•which is the size of a credit card-was made of plastic and is similar to the ones children play with,” Rodriguez said.
He said the people on the revision floor were well aware that the plastic child’s magnifier was being used and had never complained.
“Why should they? Some revisers wear eyeglasses so they can see better. Nestor Borromeo opted to use a child’s plastic magnifying glass. What difference will this make on the recounting of the votes?” Rodriguez said.
“We will not allow the election protest to be ‘disrupted by her desperate, childish and obvious attempts to delay, delay and delay the recount. Instead, we will continue our commitment to the Filipino people to fight until each and every valid vote that was cast is counted,”
Earlier this month, the PET started the revision of the votes from Iloilo province, which is the second of the three pilot provinces identified in the election protest of Marcos against Robredo.
The PET is conducting the manual recount of the votes from the ballots retrieved in Iloilo. A total of 2,264 ballot boxes from Iloilo will be revised by the tribunal.
Marcos’s camp recently expressed alarm over the reported anomalies found on the ballots from Iloilo, particularly the reports of the ballots placed inside plastic containers commonly used as household storage devices or picnic containers.
Aside from the ballots found inside household plastic containers, the retrieval team has also found wet ballots, ballot boxes with broken seals, boxes with damaged covers and metal boxes with no padlocks.
Several anomalies like wet ballots were earlier found in Camarines Sur, but it is the first time the PET has discovered ballots placed outside ballot boxes.
The PET managed to retrieve 2,264 ballot boxes from 2,740 clustered precincts in Iloilo.
