FORMER Sen. Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. has asked the Supreme Court, sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), to act on his election protest “in the midst of a well-funded and concerted destabilization plot against President Duterte”.
In a 25-page comment-opposition to the motion for reconsideration filed by Vice President Maria Leonor G. Rodredo on the PET’s resolution finding his protest to be sufficient in form and in substance, Marcos, through his lawyer George Edwin Garcia, asked the PET to proceed with his case by setting it for preliminary conference and ordering the retrieval of ballot boxes, so his case can finally move forward.
Garcia said it has been nine months since Marcos filed his election protest, and the tribunal has yet to schedule the preliminary conference. In those nine months, he pointed out, destabilization efforts against the present administration have been continuously waged.
“In those nine months, several plots on destabilizing the government have surfaced, which are contrary to public interest. There is clearly a well-funded concerted effort to undermine the Duterte administration,” he said.
Garcia said, “Robredo cannot have it both ways. She cannot keep claiming that she won the elections fair and square and yet, behind everyone’s back, she keeps finding ways to stop the truth from coming out. The evidence of Marcos is probably the same evidence that Robredo has by now. If this is the case, one cannot help but wonder why she does not want the proceeding to move forward.”
In arguing against Robredo’s claim that his protest should be dismissed because Marcos failed to allege the sufficiency of his evidence on election fraud, Garcia said the issue of sufficiency in form and in substance had been settled by the PET not just once, but twice.
Since the sufficiency in form and substance had already been settled twice, Garcia said public interest dictates that the tribunal should now set the case for preliminary conference to give way to the reception of evidence, the reopening of the ballot boxes and the manual recount, judicial revision, technical examination and forensic investigation of the paper ballots or the ballot images, or both, and other paraphernalia used in the elections.