Manual recount for Marcos poll protest vs. Robredo begins

The Supreme Court, sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), on Monday started the manual recount for the electoral protest of former senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. against Vice President Leni Robredo.

"The principal objective of this exercise is to ascertain the number of votes received by both parties in the May 9, 2016 national elections through a manual recount of the votes," the PET said in a statement as it started the manual recount.

Under Rule 65 of the 2010 PET Rules, the recount -- or revision, in PET terms -- will be limited to three pilot provinces that Marcos had chosen -- Camarines Sur, Iloilo, and Negros Oriental -- covering 5,418 clustered precincts.

"The results of the revision of the pilot provinces shall thereafter determine whether the instant protest will proceed with the remaining 31,047 protested clustered precincts, again following Rule 65 of the 2010 PET rules," the PET explained.

Reiterating what the PET's adhoc committee told reporters last week, the statement laid down the ground rules for the revision process, which had been postponed multiple times.

The revision schedule will run from Mondays to Fridays, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m, at the Supreme Court-Court of Appeals gymnasium, which has been converted into the Revision Hall.

Each of the 40 existing revision committees will be composed of one Head Revisor, who is an employee of the PET, and one revisor each from Marcos and Robredo's respective teams.

The PET is targetting to form a total of 50 revision committees.

The revision committees will be placed under a "strict" time limit for the completion of the revision of one ballot box.

The PET said that for boxes containing 300 or less ballots, the revision has to be finished within 5.5 hours.

For boxes containing 300 and 700 ballots, the revision time limit is 8.25 hours, and for those containing more than 700 ballots, the time limit is 11 hours.

The Head Revisor's duty is to segregate and examine the contents of each ballot box, determine the number of votes received by Marcos and Robredo. Meanwhile, the party representatives are allowed to claim and object to ballots as they see fit.

"If the revision committee fails to comply with the time limit, they shall proceed to revise another ballot box and the parties shall be deemed to have waived their right to claim or object to the remaining ballots," the statement said.

Malacañang welcomed the start of the recount process, saying this will settle the "long festering dispute" regarding the result of the 2016 vice presidential race. 

"The Palace welcomes the recount para ma-settle na 'yang long festering dispute na 'yan. Other than that, this is a judicial matter, this is before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal already so we leave it to the co-equal branch to handle that," Senior Deputy Executive Secretary Menardo Guevarra said at a news conference.

President Rodrigo Duterte is a political ally of the Marcoses, whose patriarch, the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos, was laid to rest at the Libingan ng mga Bayani on Nov. 18, 2016 following support from Duterte himself and later, the SC.

Marcos lost to Robredo by 263,473 votes in the May 2016 election.

The former senator filed his electoral protest a day before Robredo formally took office. —with Virgil Lopez/ALG, GMA News