Leonen finally acts on Marcos protest 

Supreme Court Associate Justice Mario Victor Leonen has finally touched the sleeping election protest of former senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. against Vice President Maria Leonor Robredo.

According to unimpeachable sources of The Manila Times in the high tribunal, Leonen, the ponente of the Marcos-Robredo poll protest, recommended a mere “comment” before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) after sitting on the case for 11 months.

He became the ponente of the case, via en banc raffle, on Oct. 29, 2019 and the PET adopted his recommendation for a comment again via memoranda of both parties on Oct.
15, 2019, during the stint of then-Chief Justice Lucas Bersamin.

With Chief Justice Diosdado Peralta now at the helm, Leonen took control of the case and both the Marcos and Robredo camps lodged their respective memoranda in January this year.

But, since January, Leonen sat on the case.

The Times learned that Leonen had postponed the case with a series of resets and “call-agains.”

On Monday, Leonen finally issued a draft ruling, which was circulated on the same day with a recommendation for the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) to issue their respective comments on the issues involved.

The Leonen draft was adopted by the PET with the Comelec ordered to comment within a non-extendable period of 20 days, then the OSG shall comment next within 15 days.

The issue is whether the PET shall proceed with the third cause of action —the annulment of votes in the Mindanao provinces — for it to be able to prove that there was indeed cheating committed by the camp of Robredo.

The case has been pending before the PET for four years and three months. Marcos filed the protest on June 29, 2016.

Some court insiders told the Times that Leonen was obviously employing “dilatory tactics.”
Some magistrates who talked to the Manila Times on condition of anonymity said that the case must be resolved because the people should know who is the real winner in the vice presidential race.

“It should not be delayed anymore by Leonen because it is the duty of the court to serve justice whoever is the real victor. Justice delayed is justice denied,” one of the sources said.

In his memorandum filed before the Supreme Court, sitting as PET, Marcos prayed that a technical examination be conducted on the voter’s signatures to show that the voting was tainted with fraud.

Marcos, the son of former president Ferdinand Marcos, argued that it could be shown that in 2,756 protested clustered precincts in Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao and Basilan, several violations eroded the integrity of the elections.

It was pointed out that the PET has the sole authority to proceed with the third cause of action, which is independent of the other causes of action on the case.

In her memorandum, the Vice President asked the PET to junk Marcos’ protest since there was no substantial recovery in his pilot provinces.

Robredo was referring to the second cause of action — the revision of ballots in the pilot provinces of Camarines Sur, Iloilo and Negros Occidental.

With a vote of 11 against 2, the PET ruled to reject the plea of Robredo and the recommendation of Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa to dismiss the protest outright based on the three pilot provinces.

Caguioa and then-Justice Antonio Carpio lost in the voting since majority of the justices ruled to keep the case alive.

But Marcos countered that there was fraud committed by Robredo and her camp in Mindanao, thus he wants to proceed with the third cause of action.

Robredo asked the PET to order Marcos to present evidence to justify the plea for technical examination of ballots.

In his protest, Marcos assailed election results in 39,221 clustered precincts — 36,465 of which he paid for the conduct of manual count and judicial revision. He also sought the annulment of poll results in the remaining 2,756 precincts.

Based on the Comelec data, the 39,221 clustered precincts are composed of 132,446 precincts.

Marcos, who lost to Robredo by 263,473 votes, accused her of “massive electoral fraud, anomalies and irregularities” such as pre-shading of ballots, pre-loading of Secure Digital cards, misreading of ballots, malfunctioning vote counting machiness, and receiving “abnormally high” unaccounted votes/undervotes for the position of vice president.