Robredo lawyer: Marcos to blame for delay in poll protest

MANILA, Philippines — If there is someone who should be blamed for the supposed "delay" in the resolution of his electoral protest, it should be losing vice presidential candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jr. himself for filing a "weak and flawed" case, the election lawyer of Vice President Leni Robredo said Monday.

Romulo Macalintal, a lawyer for Robredo, said that Marcos' oft-repeated claim of delay was "baseless" and "self-serving" and was his fault because of his weak case which necessitated the Supreme Court sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal to resolve many preliminary matters before the case progressed.

According to Macalintal, it was Marcos who first asked the PET to resolve his questions on the integrity of the automated election system and who offered to present "voluminous documents and evidence" to support his case.

"But after almost one year, after the first preliminary hearing, Marcos agreed to dismiss the issue on regularity of the automated election system and waived or withdraw the presentation of said alleged voluminous evidence," Macalintal said in a statement.

READ: SC upholds integrity of 2016 polls, orders ballot boxes retrieved

Bernadette Sardillo, another of Robredo's lawyers, said that the vice president would already want to resolve the election issue as this was giving the Marcos a way to regularly claim that he was cheated during the 2016 polls.

"For as long as the electoral protest is ongoing, they can always accuse Vice President Robredo of cheating, a claim which is unproven until now," Sardillo said in a radio interview.

Marcos on Monday presented images of ballots that would allegedly prove electoral fraud during the 2016 elections, which he lost to Robredo by more than 200,000 votes.

He said that some votes were not credited to him while multi-shaded ballots were counted for the vice president.

READ: Marcos electoral protest moves forward

During a press conference, Marcos, a former senator and son of the late Philippine dictator accused of massive human rights violations and corruption, told the vice president that he would withdraw all his pending motions and dared Robredo to do the same.

Macalintal also slammed Marcos for claiming that the PET, headed by ex-President Benigno Aquino III-appointee Justice Benjamin Caguioa, was biased against him, saying that this is simply a "ploy or strategy" that would prevent the results of the ballot recount.

"For sure, Marcos has been fully advised that the results of the recount of ballots in various places involving local election protests were dismissed since the physical count of the ballots tallied with the results generated by the vote counting machines," Macalintal said.

The Robredo lawyer said that Marcos was fully aware that no election protest involving automated polls since 2010 was successfully pursued.

"Marcos is fully aware of this situation, thus his claim of bias of the PET in favor of Robredo as he could not indeed accept defeat in good grace," he said.

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