Robredo twits Marcos for backpedaling in electoral protest

Vice President Leni Robredo

The camp of Vice President Leni Robredo on Monday twitted former Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. for backpedaling on his previous commitment to limit and identify the witnesses he would present in his election protest case.

In a manifestation, Romulo Macalintal, Robredo’s lead counsel, told the Supreme Court, sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), that Marcos also reneged on his initial support to the magistrates’ suggestion to include the Commission on Elections (Comelec) as respondent.

During the PET’s preliminary conference on July 11, he said George Erwin Garcia, Marcos’ lawyer, had agreed to implead the Comelec in the defeated vice presidential candidate’s “first cause of action” which questioned the integrity of the 2016 automated elections.

“Notwithstanding his earlier bravado during the preliminary conference, Marcos failed to abide by the agreements reached,” Macalintal said in a manifestation.

After agreeing to limit the number of his witnesses to 25, Robredo’s lawyer said Marcos insisted that he needed to present at least 51 individuals to back up his claim that last year’s elections was rigged in favor of Robredo.

Macalintal also questioned Marcos’ decision to forego his allegations of fraud covering 36,465 clustered precincts and let 187 individuals to execute “pro-forma and fill-in-the-blank affidavits” in an attempt to “lend some credence to his baseless claims.”

“Clearly, in waiving the presentation of testimonial evidence, Marcos is also abandoning his material allegations in the election protest,” he said. “This is an admission that the allegations in the election protest … are but mere concoctions of the imagination of Marcos.”

“Given the totality of the actuations of Marcos, a reasonable person cannot be faulted for thinking that his election protest is merely being used as a tool for publicity to advance his political agenda,” Macalintal said.

The son and namesake of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos had accused the Vice President of cheating after
he narrowly lost to her by over 230,000 votes, an allegation Robredo had vehemently
denied.

Marcos paid a total of P66.2 million in cash deposit for his protest covering 132,446 polling precincts while Robredo was ordered to settle P15.5 million in protest fee for questioning the results in 31,278 voting precincts.