THE Supreme Court, acting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, will begin today the recount of votes for the 2016 vice presidential elections to determine who between former senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Vice President Leni Robredo actually won the mandate for the vice presidency.
The recount, a result of the election protest filed by Marcos against Robredo, will take place at the gymnasium on the 5th floor of the SC-Court of Appeals Building on Padre Faura, Manila, and will run from Monday to Friday, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Jose Lemuel Arenas, a PET ad hoc committee member, said revision is the process of verifying the ballots, recounting the votes, and recording the objections or claims of the parties involved.
Arenas said there were 5,418 clustered precincts from the three pilot provinces of Camarines Sur, Iloilo and Negros Oriental, which were chosen by Marcos as the provinces where he could most likely prove the irregularities he cited in his election protest.
For each table, he said, there will be three revisors composed of head revisor (an employee of PET) and a revisor for each contending side.
Revisors will not be allowed to bring in their personal belongings, including mobile phones, inside the venue. The PET has provided a locker for their belongings.
The time limit per ballot box with fewer than 300 votes will be 5.5 hours, with 300 to 700 votes will be 8.25 hours, and for more than 700 votes will be 11 hours.
Some 213 people are expected to come in every day for the recount, which includes 60 Court employees, psychometricians, lawyers and representatives of both parties, and the revisors.
The revisors are part of the tribunal’s committee tasked to examine the contested ballots.
Arenas said the PET is currently housing some 1,400 ballot boxes from Camarines Sur, one of Marcos’ chosen pilot provinces for the recount.
The other ballot boxes are with the Commission on Elections, due to storage issues.
Once the recount on the first 1,400 ballot boxes is done, the PET will receive the other ballot boxes from Camarines Sur, Iloilo and Negros Oriental.
Members of the Philippine National Police, Philippine Coast Guard, Police Security Protection Group and PET guards will secure the recount venue round-the-clock.
CCTVs have also been installed surrounding the recount venue and the storage area.
Lawyer Ma. Carina Cunanan, another PET ad hoc committee member, said the parties will not be allowed to bring in their own security.
The PET said they still do not know when the recount will be finished.
Earlier, both camps agreed to withdraw all the motions they had filed before the PET to be able to proceed with the recount.
Marcos filed the protest on June 29, 2016, claiming that the camp of Robredo cheated in the automated polls in May that year.
In his protest, Marcos contested the results from 132,446 precincts in 39,221 clusters, covering 27 provinces and cities.
In his preliminary conference briefing, Marcos also sought a recount in Camarines Sur, Iloilo and Negros Oriental.
Robredo filed her answer in August last year and also submitted a counter-protest, questioning the results from more than 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 the PET.
In a ruling earlier this year, the PET rejected Robredo’s plea and proceeded with the case after finding the protest sufficient in form and substance.
Robredo won the vice presidential race in the May 2016 polls with 14,418,817 votes or 263,473 more than Marcos’ 14,155,344 votes.
Robredo expressed confidence Sunday that the recount would reaffirm her election victory.
“We are confident enough and there is nothing to worry about in the results of the recount since there is no doubt that the Vice President is the one who really won in the 2016 [vice presidential] elections,” Robredo’s lawyer Romulo Macalintal said.
He said the recount would underscore Robredo’s victory as vice president and vindicate her from the baseless accusation of Marcos that she cheated her way to victory.
“Through the recount, we can prove that Vice President Robredo really won in 2016, and that the accusations of Mr. Marcos are all but just lies,” he said.
Macalintal reiterated his previous stance that no single election protest involving local elective positions had been successful where the issue was merely a recount of the ballots since the implementation of the automated election in 2010.
“In the history of our automated election system, there is no [election] protest that has ever won since 2010,” he said. With Rio N. Araja