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Marcos' wet ballots no proof of tampering, Robredo lawyer says

April 2, 2018 | 5:10pm

Marcos' wet ballots no proof of tampering, Robredo lawyer says

In this Oct. 10, 2015 photo, Bongbong Marcos declares his decision to run for vice president. Raising his arms in the photo are mother Imelda, former President Joseph Estrada and then Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile. Having lost the bid, the former senator and son of President Ferdinand Marcos on Monday claimed that somebody was behind the wet ballots from a Camarines Sur town.

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MANILA, Philippines — The chief legal counsel of Vice President Leni Robredo in the electoral case filed by former Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. against her said on Monday that supposedly wet ballots retrieved from a Camarines Sur town is not proof of tampering.

Romulo Macalintal, a long-time election lawyer representing Robredo in the case, said wet ballots are common in around 80 percent of poll cases in the Philippines.

He said that this does not prove anything and protesters could just request and go to the ballot's digital images for their cases.

"Nothing to be alarmed. Nothing to worry about. There’s nothing to be concerned about," Macalintal said in a media briefing Monday afternoon.

In an interview on Monday morning, Marcos, the son of the late Philippine strongman, alleged that the wet ballots mean the ballot boxes had been opened and tampered with.

He also said that the audit logs of 38 out of 42 precincts were missing and claimed that somebody took these from the ballot boxes.

"This early, we already saw (some irregularities). Four precincts from Bato town, all their ballots were wet. They could not be used," the former senator said.

Macalintal said that the ballots from Bato got wet as there was a storm in Camarines Sur in December and that the Supreme Court, which sits as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, was aware of their condition.

He explained that holes in ballot boxes were normal as these are transported on trucks.

Audit logs not a problem

The missing audit logs meanwhile are not a problem, according to Macalintal, as this is also normal. He added that a party to a case could also go to the Supreme Court to request for documents they need.

“The best evidence in a recount is the ballots,” he said.

Macalintal also expressed confidence that the results of the manual recount would favor his client.

“There’s no way we can lose, and in two months’ time, we will know the result,” he said during his message after a mass attended by the vice president’s supporters in Manila.

The vice president also urged her supporters not to fear anything as the truth was on their side.

The PET on Monday started its manual recount of ballots from three pilot provinces identified by Marcos in his electoral protest. These are Robredo’s home province of Camarines Sur, Negros Oriental and Iloilo.

The recount in almost a dozen provinces would be allowed by the PET only if Marcos could show that substantially recover in the three pilot provinces. If not, the protest will be junked, according to Macalintal.

Robredo won the vice presidency by just over 260,000 votes, and Marcos and his supporters claimed that the system was rigged to favor the vice president, who was the administration candidate in 2016.