Marcos to file electoral protest vs Robredo

Losing vice presidential candidate Senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. leaves after a news forum at a restaurant in Quezon City, June 11, 2016. NINO JESUS ORBETA

Losing vice presidential candidate Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. said Saturday he was preparing to file an electoral protest against Vice President-elect Leni Robredo, accusing the Aquino administration of “institutional” cheating.

Marcos said the alleged cheating was “shamelessly” done, adding that he believed some three million votes were shaved off his final tally. Marcos, the son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, lost to Robredo by some 260,000 votes.

“I did not imagine anyone could be so cavalier about the electoral process, and again, this partisan effort over the elections was something that is unprecedented,” he said in a press conference in Quezon City.

He said he had been taking the statements of witnesses and collecting evidence to support his claim, and that his lawyers were determining the grounds for his protest on June 28.

Zero votes

Marcos accused the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and vote-counting-machine provider Smartmatic of conniving with the Aquino administration to defeat him. He said there were places where all the vice presidential candidates received zero votes, except for Robredo.

“Now who was behind all that? I think we will slowly, slowly be able to show it because the only people who could institutionalize this kind of cheating was the administration,” he said.

Institutionalized cheating

“If in fact it can be proven that this was institutionalized … then we have to lay that at the door of the administration because they are the only ones who can do that,” he said.

He said some Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) members complained their votes were not counted, and they were worried about being kicked out of the church. The INC, which is known for bloc voting, had endorsed Marcos.

Marcos said there were also cases of undervoting, which led to votes for him disappearing. He charged the Comelec with ignoring red flags that would have indicated the votes were not being protected.

He said the “trend” of the vote count changed on Election Day after the counting was briefly stopped and “hash code values” were changed.

But the Comelec had earlier said the vote was aboveboard, and that changes to the script of its transparency server were minimal and cosmetic.

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