Robredo lawyer on fraud claim: Marcos camp ‘hallucinating’

Election lawyer Romulo Macalintal. JULLIANE LOVE DE JESUS/INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

The lead counsel of Vice President Ma. Leonor “Leni” Robredo on Tuesday hit the camp of former Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. for claiming fraud during the last elections.

“The camp of former Senator Ferdinand Marcos are merely dreaming or hallucinating when they claimed that alleged data contained in 13 out of 26 SD cards decrypted by the Comelec (Commission on Elections) are evidence of ‘massive electoral fraud’ in the May 2016 elections,” Atty. Romulo Macalintal said in a statement.

Marcos’ legal team claimed that the supposed data found in unused SD cards proved “massive fraud,” which allegedly resulted in Marcos losing the vice presidential race by a small margin.

READ: Marcos camp: Data in ‘unused’ SD cards prove election fraud

Macalintal called the accusation “baseless.” He said it also proved that the Marcos camp did not understand the process in an automated election protest.

“They should remember that an election protest is not decided on the basis of SD cards but the ballots actually cast in the VCMs (vote counting machines) with the results compared with the election returns, statement of votes, and other election documents,” he said.

“The data from some of these 13 SD cards have not yet been decrypted, meaning they are still in encrypted form and have not yet been converted to its original form for an ordinary layman to understand their full contents,” Macalintal said.

“The camp of Marcos must have a bionic mind or bionic eyes to be able to read these encrypted data and immediately claim that there were electoral frauds committed in the said election,” he said.

The Marcos camp said 13 of the 26 SD cards had folders in them. They said this as the decryption process was still ongoing.

Macalintal also pointed out that the unused VCMs are not part of the Marcos protest so it “could not be the basis of any evidence to prove his case.”

“For sure, no electoral fraud was committed by Vice President Robredo,” he said.

Macalintal said their team is confident that the verification of the ballots will confirm Robredo’s victory.

He said the Marcos camp should instead respect the independence of the Supreme Court sitting as Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) and “not indirectly influence its members on the basis of non-existing, speculative and scattershot evidence of alleged ‘massive fraud.’”

The lawyer said the PET has yet to see a single ballot. “It is indeed ridiculous if not total frivolous for Marcos camp to make such a wide and speculative claim of massive fraud and even think of victory at this stage of the election protest,” he said. RAM/rga