Robredo camp: Bongbong Marcos evidence fabricated

Bongbong Marcos presents what he said was evidence of election cheating. —MARIANNE BERMUDEZ

The camp of Vice President Leni Robredo on Tuesday said that discrepancies in the ballot images that former Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. presented as evidence of election fraud might have been “fabricated or manufactured” to support his claim that he was cheated.

In a statement, Robredo’s lawyer, Romulo Macalintal, said Marcos’ claim based on only five ballot images was “highly ridiculous if not outright frivolous.”

He said the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) and the Commission on Elections (Comelec) should investigate Marcos for claiming he had in his possession hundreds of ballot images that were radically different from images generated by secure digital cards.

Marcos propaganda

“If Marcos’ ballot images do not tally with the ballot images in the custody of the PET, then those in Marcos’ possession are clearly fabricated, manufactured or tampered with to suit his political propaganda,” Macalintal said.

He dismissed as laughable Marcos’ allegation that the appearance of “mysterious squares” on the computer images of some ballots used in the May 2016 elections proved widespread fraud.

“This is a laughing matter. It made me laugh,” Macalintal told a press briefing in reaction to Marcos’ claim that they had discovered “shocking evidence” that the election results were manipulated to favor Robredo.

He urged the PET and the Comelec to look into Marcos’ contention that the ballots had been tampered with as purportedly proven by the soft copies of the ballots.

Challenge accepted

But Macalintal vehemently denied Marcos’ claim that the Vice President had secured from the PET in November the complete set of the ballot images from the polling precincts covered by his election protest.

The veteran election lawyer also accepted Marcos’ challenge to withdraw all pending motions by the Robredo camp in the PET, but said the Vice President had never filed any petition to stall the manual recount of votes.

As to Marcos’ insistence that he would overtake Robredo’s margin of victory of over 200,000 votes after the manual recount, Macalintal said: “He’s just dreaming.”

“Marcos does not want a recount because the truth will come out that what they have been saying is not true,” he added.

‘Fishing expedition’

“He is afraid because we will be able to prove that no election cheating was committed,” he said.

Macalintal said the son and namesake of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. had resorted to a “fishing expedition” after realizing that his election protest might be dismissed soon by the Supreme Court, sitting as the PET.

He said Marcos had already abandoned most of the allegations in his original complaint after he failed to submit documents as evidence.

“(His) election protest is clearly facing its eventual dismissal. He knows his protest is very weak that’s why he is using evidence outside the PET, which was not included in his protest,” he said.