Marcos camp: Comelec siding with Leni patently illegal; meant to justify cheating

The Commission on Elections’ (Comelec) decision to back Vice President Leni Robredo’s argument to use a lower shading threshold in the vote recount is not only “illegal” but also “meant to justify the cheating” of the Vice President in the 2016 polls, the camp of former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr. said on Thursday.

“As it was made suspiciously four months after the May 2016 elections and as an afterthought in support of Robredo’s belated assertions, Comelec’s position on the threshold percentage is not only patently illegal but at best meant to justify the cheating done to favor Mrs. Robredo,” Marcos’ spokesperson Atty. Vic Rodriguez said in a statement.

Earlier, the poll body told the Supreme Court, sitting as Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), that “for purposes of the 9 May 2016 NLE, Comelec, in order to ensure that votes are not wasted due to inadequate shading or that no accidental or unintended small marks are counted as votes in order to reflect the true intent of the voter, had set the ballot shading threshold at 25%.”

Marcos had asked the PET to adopt the 50% minimum shade rule, saying it was what the Comelec used in past elections.

For its part, Robredo’s camp cited the resolution passed by the Comelec for the 2016 exercise, setting the threshold at 25%.

The former senator’s camp also said that they are “not at all surprised with the Comelec position. The conspiracy is so clear and the co-conspirator is not expected to admit it.”

“The purpose of the election protest is primarily to question how the Comelec, then under the tutelage of the disgraced and impeached Andres Bautista, have misconducted the election, undertaken a false canvassing and manipulated the transmission of results in favor of Mrs. Robredo,” it added.

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