Robredo lawyer says Bongbong has himself to blame for delayed poll protest resolution

The camp of Vice President Leni Robredo on Monday said former senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. only has himself to blame for the delayed resolution in his election protest.

Lawyer Romula Macalintal, Robredo's legal counsel, said that Marcos' repeated claims of delay is "baseless" and "self-serving" since the former senator is filing "baseless motions and raising pointless issues."

"He only has to blame himself for filing a weak and flawed election protest that the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) has to resolve many preliminary matters before the case could move on," Macalintal said in a statement.

"It was Marcos who first asked the PET to first resolve the issue of defective election system and his vaunted claim that he would be presenting voluminous documents and evidence to prove his case," he added.

Macalintal also dismissed Marcos' claim that the PET is leaning for Robredo in the election protest with his poll protest as a "mere ploy or strategy to preempt the would-be results of the recount of the ballots."

"For sure, Marcos has been fully advised that the results of the recount of ballots in various places involving local election protests were dismissed since the physical count of the ballots tallied with the results generated by the vote counting machines," he said.

"This confirms the fact that no election protest involving the automated polls since 2010 to the present has been successfully pursued and Marcos is fully aware of this situation, thus his claim of bias of the PET in favor of Robredo as he could not indeed accept defeat in good grace," he added.

The PET last week started to retrieve ballot boxes from the 12 municipalities of Camarines Sur, Robredo's home province.

Macalintal said their camp is expecting the PET to begin the recount of votes in connection with the election protest filed by Marcos in the second week of February. This would cover three pilot provinces of Camarines Sur, Iloilo and Negros Oriental.

Maria Bernadette Sardillo, Robredo's other legal counsel, earlier said that they are confident the recount will "affirm" the victory of the Vice President in the 2016 elections.

"Sa panig ni Vice President Robredo, we are very confident na pagkatapos po na mabuksan at mabilang ang mga balota mula sa tatlong probinsya ay madi-dismiss ang protesta," Sardillo said in a interview on Super Radyo dzBB on Sunday.

Marcos, son of the late President Ferdinand Marcos, lost to Robredo by 263,473 votes in the May 2016 election which the former senator claimed was marred by fraud. —ALG, GMA News