‘Bongbong Marcos camp desperate to cast doubt on recount’

MANILA, Philippines — By claiming election fraud almost every day, the camp of former senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is in a “desperate” bid to cast doubt on the vote recount process and avoid embarrassment over his “dismissible” allegations, election lawyer Romulo Macalintal said yesterday.

Macalintal, lead counsel of Vice President Leni Robredo, said Marcos has no real and concrete evidence to prove his election protest.

He said Marcos’ spokesman Vic Rodriguez’s claim that Robredo should resign just because of “invented evidence” was nonsense, ridiculous and outright frivolous. 

“It’s Vic Rodriguez who should resign as a spokesperson of Mr. Marcos because from the looks of it, he’s the one supplying the wrong information and the wrong advice to Mr. Marcos regarding the proceedings in the revision by the PET,” Macalintal said in a press conference. PET stands for Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), which is doing the recount.

Macalintal stated that George Garcia, Marcos’ election lawyer, is not talking about details “because it would be a great embarrassment for an election lawyer to say that a wet ballot is an indication of fraud.”

“An election lawyer will not say wet ballots are evidence of fraud. An election lawyer will never say that the missing audit log is an indication of election fraud or irregularities. An election lawyer will never say that unused ballots are indications of electoral fraud and that’s the reason from my point of view why Mr. George Garcia is not saying anything on these matters,” Macalintal said. He added Marcos’ camp was using Rodriguez as “pawn” in spreading misleading statements.

He said the first time Marcos invented evidence was in January 2017 when he claimed that 13 secure digital (SD) cards contained proof of massive electoral fraud. 

“But when we challenged him to prove it, we even invited him to sign an agreement that he will withdraw the protest and I will also withdraw as lawyer of the Vice President, we waited in front of the Manila Cathedral sometime in January 2017 pero no show si Mr. Marcos and his lawyers,” Macalintal said in a press conference.

Marcos, he said, introduced in the same month his second invented evidence and called it “shocking evidence” of poll fraud the presence of “small square or small box” on the ballot images. 

But Macalintal said Marcos never knew that small square or small box was a new feature introduced in the 2016 elections and which was not available in the 2010 and 2013 polls. “So he invented the ‘shocking’ evidence that turned out to be no evidence at all,” Macalintal said.

On the first day of the revision of ballots from the province of Camarines Sur, he said Marcos introduced his third invented evidence of election fraud that the audit logs were missing and not inside the ballot boxes. He also said the ballot boxes were opened and the audit logs stolen. 

“These audit logs, as we’ve said earlier, cannot really be found inside the ballot boxes because these audit logs are not really deposited inside the ballot boxes but these audit logs report are given to the election officer for safekeeping and anybody who wants to request it pwede silang mag-request sa election officer,” he said.

According to Macalintal, Marcos’ fourth invented evidence of poll fraud was his claim of “wet ballots” at five precincts.