THE “abject failure” of the camp of defeated vice presidential candidate Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. to specify and prove his allegation of fraud in the 2016 national election doomed his protest against Vice President Leni Robredo, the Supreme Court sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) stated in its 93-page February ruling on the election protest.
In its decision, a copy of which was made available to the media only on Monday evening, the PET members unanimously ruled that Marcos failed to provide substantial evidence to back his allegations of cheating against Robredo.
“We have granted parties every opportunity to make and defend their arguments before this Tribunal, the proper forum to hear this case. However, protestant Marcos still failed to substantiate his allegations of massive anomalies and irregularities in protestee’s favor, “Associate Justice Marvic Leonen said in his ponencia.
“His abject failure to support his claims leaves this Tribunal with no other recourse but to dismiss his protest,” he added.
Leonen said Marcos’ defense team failed to present critical elements such as the time, place and manner of irregularities to support his “generic and repetitious allegations.”
He stressed that any election protest must “clearly and specifically” allege and “prove” the allegations raised, otherwise, it will just be dismissed.
“When the protestant fails to meet the strict requirements of specificity and established rules on evidence to support the allegation of election irregularities, the election protest must be dismissed,” he said.
“The requirement of specificity deters fishing expedition of losing candidates who, without clear basis for challenging election outcomes are merely gambling with probabilities. It prevents situations in which sweeping allegations of electoral fraud are used by defeated contenders to discover by happenstance surmised irregularities in elections,” he added.
After his loss to Robredo during the 2016 national election, Marcos went to the PET and asked for a judicial revision of votes in 36,465 clustered precincts (pilot provinces of Camarines Sur, Iloilo and Negros Oriental) and the annulment of elections in 2,756 clustered precincts in Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur and Basilan where he said terrorism, intimidation and other irregularities marred the conduct of the polls.
The PET in February this year dismissed Marcos’ electoral protest. A copy of the ruling was not made immediately available to the public.
Leonen said the Tribunal could have immediately junked the protest under Rule 21 for being insufficient in form and substance but that it decided to give the parties the chance to present their arguments and evidence as part of due process.
The PET proceeded to hear Marcos’ case questioning the results of the elections in the three pilot provinces of Camarines Sur, Iloilo and Negros Oriental. In October 2019, it junked the case and said that Marcos “failed to establish massive fraud or irregularities” in his designated pilot provinces.
“After revision and appreciation, protestant’s (Marcos) total number of votes only increased by 204,512 while protestee’s (Robredo) total number of votes increased by 1,510,178. By this alone, protestant failed to show reasonable recovery of votes in his designated pilot provinces which supposedly best exemplified his allegation of fraud and irregularities. It fail(ed) to convince this Tribunal that protestant can overcome protestee’s lead,” Leonen said.
“Considering that protestant failed to make out his case, per this Tribunal’s Rules, this protest must be forthwith dismissed without further consideration of the other provinces mentioned in his protest,” he also said.
The Tribunal opted to give Marcos another chance to present his case by requiring both parties to submit their memoranda and directed the Office of the Solicitor General and the Commission on Election to submit their comments.
As to Marcos’ third cause of action in his protest, which sought to annul the election results in Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur and Basilan, the Tribunal rejected his arguments that it was separate and not covered by Rule 65 (which allows the dismissal of the case if the protestant failed to back up his case after the revision of the votes in the three pilot provinces). It ruled that the 2016 ruling in the Abayon vs House electoral tribunal was not a binding precedent to the case as the cited decision only settled the HRET jurisdiction over the case.
Leonen said the PET can only entertain three pilot provinces in the election protest at hand, not only as stipulated under Rule 65 but also as cited the rules of other tribunals such as the Senate Electoral Tribunal.
But even as the tribunal entertained the third cause, Leonen said Marcos still failed to substantiate his case as his camp was not able to provide enough evidence, such as the names of witnesses and clustered precincts numbers where the alleged irregularities took place.
Likewise, Leonen said that even if the PET hypothetically combined the results of the revision of votes in the three pilot provinces as well as the three Mindanao provinces in Marcos’ protest, Robredo would still maintain her lead over Marcos.
The magistrates who fully agreed with Leonen’s ponente were Associate Justices Estela Perlas Bernabe, Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa, Ramon Paul Hernando, Amy Lazaro-Javier, Rosmari Carandang and Alexander Gesmundo (now the Chief Justice).
Those who concurred only with the results are then chief justice Diosdado Peralta and Associate Justices Rodil Zalameda, Mario Lopez, Henri Jean Paul Inting, Samuel Gaerlan, Ricardo Rosario, Jhosep Lopez and Edgardo delos Santos. Concurring with the results means not necessarily agreeing with all the reasons for the junking of the protest.
Only Peralta, Gaerlan and Mario Lopez submitted their separate opinions. — With Wendell Vigilia
