PET to resolve Bongbong Marcos’ complaint vs. Leni Robredo

The Supreme Court, sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, on Tuesday said it would release a ruling on a plea from losing vice presidential bet former Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr., challenging the victory of Vice President Leni Robredo.

In a media briefing, SC Public Information Office chief and spokesman Theodore Te said: "The tribunal will issue a resolution on this matter in due course."

He did not elaborate.

In his electoral protest, Marcos asked the PET, which is made up of the Supreme Court's magistrates, to set aside Robredo's proclamation on May 27 and instead declare him the winning vice presidential bet in the May 9 elections.

His lawyer George Garcia alleged that through a series of electoral frauds, anomalies and irregularities, people behind the whole operation made sure that Robredo would win and that Marcos’ votes would be reduced.

“The votes presumptively obtained by protestee Robredo during the last elections are products of electoral frauds, anomalies and irregularities. Meanwhile, the votes obtained by protestant Marcos were significantly reduced, manipulated and altered to make it appear that he only placed second during the last elections,” the petition stated.

Marcos' elecotral protest has three parts. The first shows that the system had vulnerabilities that were not remedied by Smartmatic, and as a result some groups exploited these flaws to reduce his votes and increase the votes of Robredo.

The second are the specific pieces of evidence of vote buying, intimidation, failure of elections, pre-shading, wholesale ballot feeding and the other abuses we have seen in the news.

The third focuses on the unauthorized introduction by Smartmatic’s Marlon Garcia of a new hash code (or a new script / program) into the Transparency Server and the effects brought about by the so-called cosmetic change. —NB, GMA News