THE Supreme Court on February 16, 2021, dismissed “for lack of merit” the election protest of former senator, Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos against sitting vice president, Ma. Leonor ‘Leni’ Robredo.
SC spokesperson, Brian Hosaka, in a news briefing, told the media that the vote was “unanimous” on the part of the magistrates, which took nearly 5 years since Marcos, citing electoral fraud, filed his protest before the SC on June 29, 2016.
The SC sits as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), for election protests involving the presidency and the vice presidency.
With the voting’s result, the high court also junked the counter-protest filed by Robredo.
Of the 15 justices present, Hosaka said 7 of them “fully concurred” in the dismissal while the rest “concurred” with the decision. The decision will be uploaded to the high court’s website once available, he added.
Robredo beat Marcos by 263,473 votes in the 2016 polls and her lead further increased by 15,000 votes after a “manual recount” of the votes in 3 provinces that Marcos had selected.
Marcos then urged for the “re-examination” of the vote count but this was opposed by Robredo’s camp after Marcos failed to provide evidence to support his motion.
Robredo: ‘Truth prevailed;’ lawyer said SC voting anchored on politics, not merit
Hours after learning of the high court’s verdict, Robredo held a press conference and claimed that “truth has prevailed.”
“Ngayong araw, nanaig ang katotohanan. Naitaguyod ang tunay na pasya noong 2016,” Robredo said.
“Naniwala kami na sa dulo, katotohanan ang mananaig. Naniwala kami sa proseso, naniwala kami sa integridad ng PET justices.
“We are happy and grateful that this trust was affirmed,” Robredo stated further.
James Jimenez, spokesman of the Commission on Elections (Comelec), in a talk with Pinoy Exposé, said there is “no more need” for the poll body to issue a separate ruling affirming Robredo’s victory, saying the SC’s decision is enough.
But in a separate talk with Pinoy Exposé, well-known election reforms lawyer, Glenn Chong, said the high court’s decision was based on politics and not on the merits of Marcos’ protest.
“That is not a decision on the merit and the evidence, it is a political decision,” Chong told this paper.
He argued that if the dismissal was indeed based on merit, the high court could have thrown out Marcos’ protest much earlier.
“If the protest was indeed without merit, the SC could have thrown it out in 2016 (when the protest was filed), in 2017 or even in 2018, why now when the election is very near,” Chong explained.
Chong argued the SC only now decided on Marcos’ protest because if proclaimed winner over Robredo much earlier, the former would have a better chance of winning next year’s presidential election.
Chong also warned that the SC ruling would again be used by what he always called, the “Smartmatic-Comelec Mafia” to “vindicate” the poll body from accusations of election cheating so they can again resort to subverting the election results next year.
“They (Mafia) will use the SC verdict to ‘justify’ their claim of no election cheating and they again would again resort to cheating,” the lawyer said.