Robredo camp hits Marcos for preempting PET, conditioning public mind

The camp of Vice President Leni Robredo slammed former Senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. for asking the Supreme Court (SC), sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), to assign hearing officers on his poll protest.

In a statement, Robredo's legal counsel Romulo Macalintal said Marcos' request was "premature" and "impractical."

"We have not yet even held our preliminary conference where the issues to be resolved by the PET will be defined.  And now, Marcos is again preempting the action of the PET on this matter," Macalintal said.

He said Marcos' motion was "practically intended" to condition the minds of the people or the tribunal on the issues the former senator wanted to be resolved by the PET.

Marcos had raised with the PET the “flawed” Automated Election System (AES), the failure of elections in several provinces in Mindanao, and the unauthorized introduction by Smartmatic’s Marlon Garcia of a new script into the transparency server on the day of the elections on May 9, 2016.

"We are not even sure whether the three causes of action raised by Marcos in his protest would be sustained by the PET," Macalintal said.

"Furthermore, it would be impractical to have three officers to hear the three causes of action. There is only one lead lawyer for the protestant and the protestee. Surely, the lead lawyer has to be present in every stage of the hearing and cannot be in three places at the same time," he added.

Macalintal noted that the three issues were  interconnected, making it improper for three hearing officers to resolve them separately.

GMA News Online already asked Marcos' election lawyer George Garcia for comment but has yet to get a response as of posting time.

The PET is set to hold a preliminary conference on June 21 in connection with Marcos' protest which Robredo had already challenged by filing a counter protest.

During the preliminary conference, the parties are expected to discuss the issues to be resolved, the list of witnesses, and the evidence to be presented, as well as the schedule of hearings and the revision of the ballots.

Filed on May 12, Marcos' motion said that the designation of hearing officers prior to the conduct of the preliminary conference was consistent with the "summary nature and preferential status of election protest cases."

Marcos also reiterated the need to resolve the poll protest soon "not only for the benefit of the winner but for the sake of public interest, which can only be achieved by brushing aside technicalities of procedure which protract and delay the trial of an ordinary action."

The former senator is contesting the poll results in 39,221 clustered precincts representing 132,446 precincts, while the vice president is questioning the results in 8,042 clustered precincts which are composed of 31,278 precincts.

Marcos lost to Robredo by just 263,473 votes in the May 2016 elections that the former senator claimed was marred with fraud.— MDM, GMA News