Supreme Court ruling on shading threshold favors Leni Robredo

MANILA, Philippines — The Supreme Court (SC), sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), has dropped the 50 percent shading threshold in the manual recount of votes as sought by former senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in his election protest against Vice President Leni Robredo.

In a 20-page resolution dated Sept. 18 but released only yesterday, the PET partially granted Robredo’s motion for reconsideration seeking application of the 25-percent threshold used by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) during the canvassing of votes in the May 2016 automated polls.

“From the foregoing, for purposes of the 2016 elections, the 50 percent shading threshold was no longer applied. It is likewise clear, however, that a new threshold had been applied,” the 21-page resolution read. The resolution did not specifically mention the use of the 25 percent threshold.

“After assiduously going through the parties’ comments and arguments, the court herein resolves to partially grant the subject motion (of Robredo) insofar as setting aside the use of 50 percent threshold in the revision proceedings is concerned,” it said.

The SC had initially denied Robredo’s motion to set the valid vote threshold for the manual recount at 25 percent, saying that the Comelec did not inform the tribunal of its resolution, which allowed the use of such threshold in the 2016 polls.

Robredo has been pushing for a 25 percent valid vote threshold based on the 2016 Comelec rules, while Marcos said it should be 50 percent in accordance with the 2010 PET Rules.

The recount, which started April 2, covers three pilot provinces identified by Marcos in his protest: Camarines Sur, Iloilo and Negros Oriental.

In a press conference yesterday, Robredo’s lead counsel Romulo Macalintal called the PET ruling a “very significant legal and political victory on our part.”

The camp of the Vice President said it only received a copy of the PET resolution Tuesday night.

Robredo said she was “very happy” with the decision, noting that all SC justices, except for Associate Justices Antonio Carpio and Diosdado Peralta, who were on leave and on official business, respectively, at the time the tribunal came up with the decision, have affixed their signatures on the resolution.

“There’s no doubt that the SC justices appreciated what is right. We are hoping that after this resolution, the recount process will continue, so we can move on,” Robredo said.

“What’s important is the most important question (on ballot shading threshold) has been answered,” she said.

But Marcos’ spokesman, lawyer Vic Rodriguez, contested such interpretation of the ruling.

“They are speaking lies to twist the ruling of the tribunal,” Rodriguez said in a phone interview.

“It is clear in the ruling that the correct interpretation is 50 percent as regards the threshold and not 25 as they claimed. In fact, in the ruling, the tribunal said they were never given that resolution saying that the shading threshold should be at 25 percent,” the lawyer insisted.

The resolution was penned by Associate Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa.

Robredo said the PET’s resolution also belied Marcos’ position that with 50 percent shading threshold, the votes that she garnered from the three pilot provinces could be reduced by as much as 21,000.

“There was no reduction, and it is stated in the resolution. The 21,000 reduced votes was only a propaganda of Marcos,” Robredo said, adding that she still expects vicious attacks from the Marcos camp even with the PET’s ruling on ballot shading threshold. Robredo defeated Marcos by 263,473 votes in the 2016 elections.

Meanwhile, the PET also denied Marcos’ opposition to the use of ballot images in cases where the ballots were wet, damaged or unreadable.

“It is inconsistent that Marcos would now oppose the use of ballot images when he himself moved for decryption of the ballot images,” the tribunal stated.

The PET also sustained Comelec’s position that warned of “serious technical challenges” in using vote-counting machines to re-feed the questioned ballots.

The PET adopted the poll body’s recommendation to instead use the ballot images to resolve any issue on the shading threshold.

All the ballot images of the three pilot protested provinces of Marcos were “already decrypted, printed and are in the custody of the PET,” the resolution said.

The PET also recognized the evidentiary value of the election returns generated by the vote counting machines (VCMs) being in electronic and printed form. The materials could also be used as basis to compare the results of the physical count of the ballots and the electronic count made by the machines. – With Edu Punay, Alexis Romero