Senator Bongbong Marcos files an electoral protest
Video Source: The Philippine Daily Inquirer
Marcos seeks VP vote recount
June 29, 2016 11:37 pm
by JAIME R. PILAPIL, REPORTER
POLL PROTEST Supporters of outgoing Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. patiently waits for him to file an electoral protest at the gates of the Supreme Court in Padre Faura in Manila on Wednesday. (Inset: Marcos shows voluminous documents to prove his claim that results of the May 9 vice presidential elections was marred with fraud). PHOTO BY ABBY PALMONESenator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. on Wednesday filed an electoral protest before the Supreme Court (SC), sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), questioning results of the vice presidential race.
In a 1,200–-page petition, the Ilocano lawmaker said he, not Camarines Sur Rep. Leni Robredo, should be declared the rightful winner because he can easily overtake Robredo’s lead of 263,473 once the votes in 40 areas are corrected through a recount.
“It is my moral and social duty to the Filipino people to expose the truth, and the fraudulent machinations, anomalies and irregularities which attended the recently concluded May 9 elections, by filing this election protest. I owe it to the 14 million people who voted for me and to the millions of Filipinos whose voices were not heard,” Marcos added.
He personally filed the petition at the SC at 4 p.m. He brought with him 20,000 pages of documentary and testimonial pieces of evidence.
The outgoing senator is contesting the results in 39,221 clustered precincts in 25 provinces and five highly urbanized cities.
He said the SC will have an easy time to decide on the case because the evidence of fraud was overwhelming.
The PET is composed of the Chief Justice as chairman and the 14 associate justices as members. A vote of seven members is enough to declare the final winner.
The tribunal has the sole power to hear and determine election protests involving the presidential and vice presidential polls.
In the past, the tribunal tackled the election protest filed by Sen. Loren Legarda against Vice President Noli de Castro and the election protest lodged by former senator Manuel “Mar” Roxas 2nd against Vice President Jejomar Binay.
The tribunal is mandated to hear and decide the protest in 20 months.
“The votes presumptively obtained by Robredo during the last elections are products of electoral frauds, anomalies and irregularities. The votes obtained by protestant Marcos were significantly reduced, manipulated and altered to make it appear that he only placed second,” the lawmaker said.
Marcos added that his petition is based on a flawed Automated Election System (AES), traditional modes of cheating like vote-buying, pre-shading, intimidation and failure of elections and unauthorized introduction by Smartmatic’s Marlon Garcia of a new hash code into the transparency server of the Commision on Elections (Comelec).
“The first shows that the system had vulnerabilities that were not remedied by Smartmatic and as a result some groups exploited these flaws to reduce my votes and increase the votes of Robredo so that she could win the vice presidency. The second are the specific [pieces of] evidence of vote-buying, intimidation, failure of elections, pre-shading, wholesale ballot feeding and other abuses [that] were in the news. The third focuses on the unauthorized introduction by Smartmatic of a new hash code into the transparency server and the effects brought about by the so-called cosmetic change,” he said.
Smartmatic, a Venezuelan firm, was the technology provider for the May 9 polls.
Marcos said the Comelec and Smartmatic committed five major violations.
He noted that Republic Act 9369 requires that the AES to be used in the 2016 balloting should have been used successfully in the country or abroad.
But, he said, the Vote Counting Machines or VCMs used were entirely new.
Another violation was that 13 days before May 9, the Comelec ordered the Board of Canvassers not to transmit the Certificates of Canvass (COC) until all SD (secure digital) cards from the VCMs have been uploaded or imported into their Consolidation and Canvassing System (CCS).
Third is the fact that six days before May 9, the Comelec set up seven regional hubs for the reconfiguration of SD cards without prior notice. Configurations should have been done only at the Santa Rosa (Laguna) facility of Comelec-Smartmatic.
Fourth is when instead of being replaced by standby CCSs, 30 CCSs were pulled out of the custody of the Bureau of Customs and were delivered to the Santa Rosa facility upon the order of the Comelec through Executive Director Jose Tolentino.
The last was the introduction of a new hash code, which triggered a surge of votes for Robredo.
Marcos asked the PET to order a recount of the questioned ballots and a verification of voter’s receipts and election returns, including system audit.
Some 400 marchers trooped to Padre Faura Street in Manila to show their support to the senator.
Article Source: The Manila Times
lv are discussing. 
EDF are discussing. 
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Atty. Romeo J. Somera on June 30, 2016 Permalink |
The problem with the Marcos approach of attacking the entire system is the implication that because the system is flawed the election is flawed and therefore the results were flawed. If that has to be the case then all elective positions, not just the VP are the result of a flawed election system that the whole “shebang” must be invalidated. Such a universal reasoning maybe unacceptable to the SC and just reject the argument and toss the electoral protest out. If however the SC would look in depth on the fraud allegations substantiated by 20,000 of documents, Marcos might have a chance. For how can you explain numerous precincts where he was in a zero votes. That is a statistical improbability. And why just in the VP and not other elective positions? Also the 3 million plus undervotes seems to me as a clear indication of fraud. For why was that much unvervotes on the VP alone?. Those 39,221 clustered precincts may provide the answer. After all, just 10% of 3 million is more than enough to offset the 236,000 vote lead of Leni.
lv on July 1, 2016 Permalink |
With Sereno as the chief justice, chances are that the electoral protest might be tossed out since she is an Aquino supporter. She might be able to sway the other justices to agree with her but if she gets impeached for some reason, Bongbong would have a better chance of winning the electoral protest. It will be interesting to see how these justices in the Supreme Court would handle the electoral protest. It will be at least 20 months before we will know the result.
Atty. Romeo J. Somera on July 1, 2016 Permalink |
But Aquino is gone and Sereno on her immediate previous legal stands, even with Aquino’s waning term, were against his administration. How much more now?
Paul L. Villanueva on July 2, 2016 Permalink |
I respected the late Ferdinand Marcos Sr. during his time of his Presidency but when American News Reporter came out about his corruption during his exiled to Hawaii I changed my mind. The Marcoses can not survive without politics. Ti pagbagassan da ket Politico ta iso metla ti ammo da. What a life, why don’t they start working somewhere else other than politics.