Bongbong Marcos to file election protest on June 28

Representatives of Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. announced on Tuesday that they would be filing an election protest before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) over the senator’s defeat during the May 9 vice presidential race.

Lawyer Jose Amorado, head of Marcos legal team, said the senator intended to file the election protest on June 28, a day before the PET’s June 29 deadline for filing of protest for presidential and vice presidential posts.

Amorado said that their protest would specifically ask for a recount of votes in areas where allegedly there were indications of election fraud and manipulation. They would especially want a recount in some towns in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) where Marcos got zero votes based on the election returns (ERs) and certificates of canvass (COCs).

“We believe that we have enough evidence to show that there was massive rigging and manipulation of votes,” Marcos’ political adviser, ABAKADA party-list Rep. Jonathan Dela Cruz, meanwhile claimed.

Dela Cruz explained that between 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. on May 9, transmitted election results showed that Marcos lost in 1,689 precincts, mostly in the provinces of Leyte, Samar, Pangasinan and other areas in Region II which were considered as the senator's bailiwicks.

Dela Cruz and Amorado also said that they had just learned that the Comelec had used a “fourth server” or the so-called “queue server” which was never subjected to a source code review.

Amorado and Dela Cruz alleged that instead of being transmitted directly to the Municipal Board of Canvassers servers, Comelec server and transparency server, vote results were first coursed through the fourth server.

Dela Cruz claimed that the fourth server was not divulged to the public and unlike the other servers, was never subjected to a source code review,

Amorado added that there were also no watchers allowed in the location of the supposed fourth server.

Amorado said they had asked the Comelec to preserve and secure “any and all servers, as well as other related-IT equipment used in the elections” in preparation for the election protest that their camp is set to file before PET.

Marcos had earlier alleged that the introduction of a new script or computer command in the Comelec transparency servers between 7:30 to 8 p.m. on May 9 might have affected the transmission of votes, because it was at this point that his opponent, Camarines Sur Rep. Leni Robre, overtook Marcos.

Robredo defeated Marcos by 263,473 votes. According to the official tally of the National Board of Canvassers, Robredo finished with 14,418,817 votes while Marcos had 14,155,344 votes.

Sen. Marcos is the son of the late dictator, Ferdinand Marcos. — DVM, GMA News