Robredo camp says Marcos is dreaming on claims of 2016 poll cheating

Election lawyer Romulo Macalintal. INQUIRER.net file photo

The camp of Vice President Leni Robredo on Tuesday branded as “childish” the claim of former Senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos that the cheating in the 2016 polls is “Marcos specific.”

Marcos, on Monday accused Robredo, Smartmatic and the Commission on Elections (Comelec) of conspiring against him.

“For sure, Marcos has no evidence to prove this ridiculous claim and we will not dignify it with further comment for it is highly impossible that a vote counting machine could be directed to cheat for only one person,” Atty. Romulo Macalintal, counsel for Robredo said.

READ: Marcos presents evidence on vote-manipulation in 2016 polls

Marcos said they have acquired ballot images showing that votes in his favor has been counted as “undervote” or ballots that are not counted while ballots with “mysterious square” marks were counted in favor of Robredo.

But Macalintal said the allegation of Marcos is “laughable.”

“At itong mga sinasabi nyang ito ay nakakatawa—laughing matters as far as I am concerned (And all of these things he is saying are just laughable),” Macalintal said.

“If laughter is the best medicine, then we can consider it medicine for us for the day,” he added.

Macalintal added that Marcos is only dreaming when he claimed that he could overtake Robredo by over 200,000 votes.

The Marcos camp said there are over 240,000 undervotes in three pilot provinces—Camarines Sur, Iloilo and Negros Oriental.

“That is just under his dream na iyong mga undervotes na iyon ay mabibilang para sa kaniya. Pero iyon ay pangarap lang ni Marcos. It’s just a dream and when he wakes up, he will realize the truth that these undervotes are not really votes , and these undervotes are votes that are not really counted for any candidate at all,” he said.

(This is just under his dream that these undervotes will be counted in his favor. But that’s only the dream of Marcos.)

Macalintal added that the claim of Marcos that the “oval shape” feature of the ballot has disappeared.

He said if the ballots that Marcos has shown to the media were used in the elections, Marcos’ poll watchers and supporters should have noticed it especially it is claimed that there were “hundreds upon hundreds” of such a ballot.

“Since the time of election and up to the present not a single poll watcher from among the hundreds upon hundreds of Marcos’ watchers has ever come up to confirm Marcos’ excited and fantastic claim of poll fraud,” Macalintal said.

“The best evidence to prove if “hundreds upon hundreds” of ballots contained the questionable features raised by Marcos are the copies in the custody of the PET and not the self-serving copies of Marcos,” he added. /jpv