Bongbong: I was robbed of 3 M votes

MANILA, Philippines - Defeated vice presidential aspirant Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos announced yesterday that he would file an election protest on June 28 against Camarines Sur Rep. Leni Robredo, who beat him by a narrow margin of 263,000 votes.

He told a news conference that vote-rigging operators hired by the administration robbed him of three million votes.

“These are the under-votes, voided votes and null votes. They number about three million. These were the votes that were taken away from me,” he said.

Marcos blamed President Aquino for his loss to Robredo, the administration candidate.

He recalled that in the early part of the campaign, Aquino vowed to do all he could so that Marcos would not win.

“He himself might not have been involved in the cheating, but his statement served as a marching order for those under him and administration allies to cheat,” he said.

He said such allies include those in the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

He said he is sure that Aquino, at the very least, knew of the cheating.

He expressed confidence that he would win the protest he would file with the Supreme Court sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal.

“Eventually, I will take the seat that would be kept warm for me (by Robredo),” he said.

Marcos also told The STAR that he did not only lose votes in the election, “I also lost a lot of weight.” He pointed to the new holes that were punctured in his belt due to weight loss and even showed how loose his belt has become. He added that his talks with president-elect Duterte did not just last until 3 a.m., “but until 4 a.m.! I guess these are the new working hours now.”

‘Marcos sowing division’

For her part, vice president-elect Robredo said the Marcos camp is sowing division with its cheating allegations.

“Instead of starting anew to unite the country, they continue to divide our country with their statements,” Robredo said.

“It is disturbing that every week, they issue statements to condition the minds of our countrymen with regard to the previous election,” she added.

Robredo said Marcos’ claims go against the statements of the Comelec, the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), and election observers who declared that the election was clean.

Robredo’s lawyer Romulo Macalintal said Marcos has the right to express his views but maintained that there was no cheating during the polls.

“We are not just confident. We are very, very confident (that Robredo won),” Macalintal said in a phone interview.  

Moreover, Macalintal said that his client’s opponent could not claim that the “under-votes, voided votes and null votes” were votes for him.

“There is under-voting when one votes for a presidential candidate and does not vote for a vice presidential aspirant and vice-versa. In other words, there is no vote for a particular candidate. Under-voting does not indicate fraud and no candidate can claim a vote that is not there,” he said.

George Garcia, Marcos’ canvassing lawyer, has estimated that under-votes alone could reach from 3.8 million to 3.9 million.

Marcos said he would detail in his protest how he was cheated, where, who ordered the cheating, and who did it.

“We did not expect that this was going to be so coarse, so shameless, so rude. We could not imagine that people in high office could do it,” he said in a mixture of English and Filipino.

He said the Comelec and Smartmatic, its automation service contractor, ignored his complaints.

He pointed out that he was leading Robredo by nearly one million votes in the early hours of the unofficial count on May 9 shortly after the close of voting, which was proof that he won but was robbed of victory.

“There was a one-hour gap in the transmission of votes. After that, my huge lead was gradually wiped out. I continuously lost 40,000 votes in each of the 31 updates made in the morning of May 10,” he stressed.

Marcos claimed that during the one-hour gap, votes were diverted to a hidden server and then changed before being transmitted to the Comelec and PPCRV transparency server.

He said he would produce witnesses involved in the cheating.

“You know, in our country, no secret remains a secret for a long time. It is a secret for a short while, but after that, people will know about it,” he said. – With Alexis Romero