Robredo lawyer sees collusion between Marcos, Calida in poll protest

A lawyer for Vice President Leni Robredo on Tuesday said he sees a "collusion" between former senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos, Jr. and Solicitor General Jose Calida in Marcos' election protest before the Supreme Court.

Lawyer Emil Marañon said the vice president's legal team plans to question the "very abnormal" and "very suspicious" participation of the government's chief lawyer in what he said was supposed to be a private suit between Marcos and Robredo.

Marcos sought the inhibition of Associate Justice Marvic Leonen from proceedings in the four-year-old protest on Monday, alleging the justice has delayed the case and shown bias against the Marcos family.

The Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) filed its own motion, raising similar arguments, hours later.

In an interview on CNN Philippines, Marañon said it was "physically impossible" for the OSG to have prepared its own motion to inhibit and filed it on the same day that Marcos did.

"But 'yung punto natin po [is] the apparent collusion, as submitted by Mr. Marcos earlier on, is very apparent po sa action ng Solicitor General. He’s coming in as the Tribune of the People supposedly, but ang tanong namin po, bakit doon po siya kumakampi sa natalo, 'yung ni-reject ng taumbayan?" the lawyer said.

"Bakit hindi po doon sa nanalo kung totoong Tribune of the People po siya?  Ang tanong namin po, baka tribune of Mr. Marcos po si Solicitor General Calida po," he added.

He said Marcos and Calida raised similar arguments and even submitted "similarly worded" sentences.

Marcos, on the other hand, has claimed he has not discussed his election protest with Calida, who campaigned for him in 2016.

"We have not been in any kind of communication with the SolGen's office. I’m sure that the SolGen is perfectly capable of acquiring a copy, so I’m sure he was able to read our motion before he filed his own motion. Again, you will have to ask the SolGen how that came about," the former senator told CNN Philippines.

Marañon, for his part, also raised that the OSG had "abandoned" its client, the Commission on Elections, to "favor" Marcos over the shading threshold issue in the protest two years ago.

Taking the same stance as Marcos, the OSG in 2018 backed the 50-percent threshold in determining how the contested ballots will be counted. Robredo was pushing for a 25-percent threshold. The SC, sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, eventually set aside the 50-percent threshold.

Marañon said these actions led them to question the OSG's impartiality. 

"And actually his action of being actively participating in this case when supposedly a protest case is a private suit between the Vice President and Bongbong Marcos, there’s no government agency involved here, so bakit siya nakikisawsaw sa kaso ng Vice President natin po?" he said.

Marcos has been challenging Robredo's election win since 2016, alleging poll fraud. Robredo's term ends in 2022.

The former senator claimed that Leonen sitting as the justice-in-charge means the case will be delayed until it becomes moot.

Robredo's camp has countered that Marcos has lost twice -- first in the elections and again in the recount of ballots from three provinces, in which Robredo's lead widened by some 15,000 votes -- and argued the protest should already be dismissed.

They have also dared Marcos to stop acting like a "spoiled brat" -- a statement that the son of the late president Ferdinand Marcos said is a "personal insult" that he has grown used to.

"When you have grown tired of descending into the gutter with your personal insults, when you have run out of things to say, please answer my motion. You can call me any name you want, you can call me anything you want, but at the end of it, answer my motion," Marcos said.—AOL, GMA News