Filtered By: Topstories
News

Glenn Chong not part of Bongbong’s legal team, lawyers tell PET


Lawyers for former senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. have told the Supreme Court (SC) that former Biliran representative Glenn Chong is not part of the defeated vice presidential candidate's legal team.

In a filing obtained Thursday, Marcos' lawyers, George Garcia and Joan Padilla, informed the SC that Chong was "never engaged" by Marcos as legal counsel for his election protest against Vice President Leni Robredo.

"Any claim to the contrary is [a] flagrant lie," they told the SC, sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), the court handling the high-profile poll case.

Marcos' lawyers claimed so to explain why the former senator is "incompetent" to comment on Robredo's allegations against the erstwhile congressman.

Robredo had asked the PET last September to investigate how Chong, who himself claims to have no connection to the parties in the election protest, came to possess audit logs from a Camarines Sur town and documents related to the case.

The vice president's lawyers also alleged that Chong was present during activities that party representatives were supposedly allowed to observe, as well as during the preliminary conference hearing on the case.

In their comment to the accusations, Marcos' lawyers said it was a member of their legal team, Jose Amor Amorado, who included Chong as one of the witnesses for Marcos in support of his first cause of action in the poll protest.

The first cause of action refers to Marcos' questioning of the integrity of the automated election system. It was junked by the PET last year.

It was also Amorado, they said, who included Chong as a representative during the revision proceedings, the preliminary conference, and the decryption, stripping and turnover activities before the Commission on Elections.

"According to Atty. Amorado, the accommodation extended to Atty. Chong is premised on the latter's advocacy for clean and honest elections," Marcos' lawyers said, adding that his participation was "strictly limited" to observing the proceedings.

They denied providing Chong copies of pleadings, resolutions, and other documents in connection with the election protest, and stated that the former congressman should clarify where he obtained the ones he supposedly posted on his Facebook page and used for his testimony at a Senate hearing in August.

"He was never given any authority to represent and/or speak for and on behalf of protestant Marcos," they told the PET.

These accusations are an offshoot of Marcos' pending election protest challenging Robredo's victory in the 2016 polls. The manual vote recount connected to the case, which started in April, is ongoing. — MDM, GMA News

LOADING CONTENT