Bongbong to file poll protest a day before Leni assumes VP post

Senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. will file on Wednesday a protest before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal against Vice President-elect Leni Robredo.

The filing of the protest comes a day before the oath-taking of Robredo as vice president.

Lawyer Jose Amorado said the outgoing senator will be accompanied by his legal team and son, Sandro, when he files the protest at the Supreme Court around 11 a.m.

Marcos will hold a press conference after the filing, the lawyer added.

The deadline for the filing of protests for the presidential and vice presidential posts is June 29.

Robredo and President-elect Rodrigo Duterte will assume their posts after separate inauguration ceremonies on June 30.

Amorado, head of Marcos' legal team, earlier said they would specifically ask for a recount of votes in areas where there were allegedly indications of election fraud and manipulation.

He had mentioned that Marcos had zero votes in some towns in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, based on election returns and certificates of canvass.

Robredo was proclaimed winner with a lead of 263,473 votes over Marcos, her closest rival.

The official tally of the National Board of Canvassers showed that Robredo received 14,418,817 votes while Marcos got 14,155,344 votes.

Marcos' camp had claimed that the introduction of a new script or computer command to the Comelec transparency servers between 7:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. on May 9 might have affected the transmission of votes.

Marcos led the canvassing for the vice presidential race during the first few hours after the May 9 elections.

ABAKADA party-list Rep. Jonathan dela Cruz, the senator's political adviser, claimed 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 Marcos' bailiwicks.

Dela Cruz and Amorado claimed that the Comelec used a "fourth server" or “queue server” which was never subjected to a source code review.

They said that instead of being transmitted directly to the Municipal Board of Canvassers servers, the Comelec server and the transparency server, vote results were first coursed through the fourth server. —ALG, GMA News