SC says first stage of recount in Bongbong-Leni case completed

The initial stage of the manual recount of the ballots in Ferdinand Marcos Jr.'s election protest against Vice President Leni Robredo has been completed, the Supreme Court said on Tuesday afternoon.

The SC's Public Information Office issued the case update after lawyers of both Robredo and Marcos said that the SC's revision of the ballots had been suspended "indefinitely."

"On January 21, 2019, the revision of ballots was completed except for a few ballot boxes, which were referred to the Tribunal for further action, and the wet or damaged ballots, where the Tribunal directed the Revision Committee (RC) to use the decrypted ballot images provided by the Commission on Elections (COMELEC)," the update said.

"The revision proceedings for the remaining ballot boxes and decrypted ballot images will continue on January 28, 2019. In the interim, the Tribunal shall prepare for the use of decrypted ballot images in the revision proceedings," it added. 

The "few" remaining ballot boxes include those that were referred to the SC, sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) for further action, and wet and damaged ballots, which the PET ordered recounted on the basis of their corresponding decrypted ballot images.

The PET it appears gave itself a week to prepare for another step in the revision proceedings and did not order an indefinite suspension, as what appeared from earlier statements by lawyers for Marcos and Robredo.

Alleging massive election fraud, Marcos is challenging Robredo's victory in the 2016 vice presidential race.

The mostly completed manual vote recount is part of the initial stage of his two-year-old election protest before the PET.

The present recount, officially called a revision, covers contested ballots from clustered precincts in three pilot provinces Marcos chose—Camarines Sur, Iloilo and Negros Oriental.

The revision will be followed by an appreciation of ballots, where the PET will rule on all objections and claims made by the parties when the ballots were being recounted.

Only after the appreciation proceedings will the PET be able to determine whether or not the poll protest will move on to the rest of Marcos' contested poll precincts across 24 other provinces.

The SC PIO noted that none of the four election protests filed with the PET since 1992 reached the conclusion of ballot revision proceedings.

The PET is the sole judge of all election protests involving the president and the vice president of the Philippines. —NB, GMA News