Marcos asks SC to set aside Robredo proclamation, files protest

Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court sitting as Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) to set aside the proclamation of Vice President-elect Ma. Leonor “Leni” Robredo.

In his 1,000 page petition, he urged PET to declare him as the duly elected and rightful vice president of the Philippines.

Marcos also submitted 20,000 pages of affidavits, certificates of canvass (COCs) and other supporting documents.

“The votes presumptively obtained by protestee Robredo during the last elections are products of electoral frauds, anomalies and irregularities. Meanwhile, the votes obtained by protestant Marcos were significantly reduced, manipulated and altered to make it appear that he only placed second during the last elections,” the petition stated.

Subject of his protest is the reopening of ballot boxes in each of the 36,465 clustered precincts in Cebu, Leyte, Negros Occidental, Negros Oriental, Masbate, Zamboanga del Sur, Zamboanga del Norte, Bukidnon, Iloilo, Bohol, Quezon, Batangas, Western Samar, Misamis Oriental, Camarines Sur, second district of Northern Samar, Palawan, Sibugay, Misamis Occidental, Pangasinan, Isabela, Iloilo City, Bacolod City, Cebu City, Lapu Lapu City and Zamboanga City.

Marcos is also asking the PET to annul the election results in Lanao del Sur, Basilan and Maguindanao, where he alleged ballots have been pre-shaded, and do a recount in 22 provinces and five cities.

Marcos said his petition had three parts, the first part of which was about the “flawed” Automated Election System (AES).

For one, the petition noted that an automated system should have a demonstrated capability and should have been successfully used in a prior electoral exercise. However, the vote counting machines (VCM), one of the components of the system supplied by Smartmatic, had no “demonstrated capability” nor was it ever successfully used in a prior electoral exercise either in the Philippines or in any other country.

“Since there were no records as to how ‘successful’ the VCMs worked in the past, the procurement of the same was highly suspicious,” the petition stated.

The second part of his petition consists of the more “traditional” modes of cheating like vote buying, pre-shading, intimidation and failure of elections, among others; and the third focuses on the unauthorized introduction by Smartmatic’s Marlon Garcia of a new hash code or a new script or program into the Transparency Server as well as the effects brought about by the unauthorized change.

The petition also noted the following violations committed by both the Commission on Elections and Smartmatic:

a. Thirteen days before the Election Day, Comelec issued a resolution ordering the BOCs not to transmit the COC until all SD cards from the VCMs would have been uploaded or imported into their Consolidation and Canvassing System (CCS);

b. Six days before elections, the Comelec set up seven regional hubs for the reconfiguration of SD cards without prior notice to the political parties and candidates, or any announcement thereof to the public. All this time, the national and local candidates thought that the SD cards were being configured solely at the configuration room in the Sta. Rosa facility of Smartmatic or Comelec;

c. Instead of being replaced by standby CCS, 30 affected CCSs were pulled out of the BOCs’ custody, and were supposedly delivered to the Sta. Rosa facility for reconfiguration, upon the order of Comelec, through Executive Director Jose M. Tolentino;

d. Unauthorized introduction of a new program into the Transparency Server and the apparent use of fourth server (called the Queue Server) that was not subject to review by political parties and candidates required by Republic Act No. 9369

Marcos said the voting public was made to believe that all electoral data were received by the three servers directly from the VCMs and that these were secured by digital signatures and coded encryptions. This was a far cry from what truly happened on election day, he said.

“Data had to pass through the fourth server and it was here where the results were encrypted and decrypted. This being the case, the integrity of the data subsequently received by the CCSs, the Central Server and the Transparency Sever could no longer be relied upon since the purpose of encryption of the data transmission is precisely to prevent any alteration or change,” he pointed out.

Marcos also noted that soon after the unauthorized new program was introduced at around 8:30 p.m. on May 9, there appeared to be an abnormally high turnout of unaccounted undervotes of around three million for the position of vice president.

The accuracy of the poll results and the reported irregularities should therefore be thoroughly investigated and determined, according to Marcos, through the immediate conduct of judicial revision or recount of the ballots and the examination, system audit and verification of the voter’s receipts, election returns and related election documents.

“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 2016 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 said.

Before he filed his petition, Marcos posted on his Facebook Page a video on his claims of electoral fraud. It has since received 319,000 views and 16,000 likes.